The People

D'Arcy geologist Ronald G. MacLean was the first to spot the Lady Be Good from the air.

Silver City pilot Charles P. Hellewell was at the core of the discovery of the Lady Be Good.

Geologist Don J.R. Sheridan was with Bowerman and Martin when they found the Lady Be Good.

Geologist A. John Martin was one of the three D'Arcy men to find the Lady Be Good along with Bowerman and Sheridan.

D'Arcy surveyor F. Gordon Bowerman was the first to spot the Lady Be Good on the ground.

Silver City First Officer Ken W. Honey fixed the Lady Be Good's position from the air.

The Lady Be Good was spotted from the air on 16 May, 1958, by an aerial reconnaissance team working for D'Arcy Exploration, a subsidiary of the British Petroleum Oil Company.

The aircraft from which the sighting took place was a DC-3 Dakota. The pilot of the "Silver City Airways" aircraft was Captain Charles P. Hellewell, 35.

The First Officer was Tony G. Hunt, 34.

The Radio Officer was Bill Colvin, 28.

The man who spotted the Lady Be Good was 33-year old Ronald G. MacLean, D'Arcy Exploration's chief geologist in Libya.

Hunt and MacLean fixed the position of the bomber to within 4 miles of her actual location. As a follow-up to the sighting, Tony Hunt personally reported the sighting to the duty officer at the US Wheelus Air Base, Tripoli, and gave details.

No action was taken by the Americans. A second sighting from the air by D'Arcy oilmen on 15 June,1958, (Hellewell was again the pilot and Ken W. Honey was the first officer) prompted another report, this time to the RAF, and again, no action was taken.

Honey fixed the position of the Liberator to within one mile of her true location. In February, 1959, a party of three D'Arcy oilmen were conducting a ground survey in the vicinity of the Lady Be Good. They were aware of the ship in the desert; they had Honey's fix—passed on to them by Hellewell—and set out to find her.

The party comprised Drs. Don Sheridan and A. John Martin, geologists, F. Gordon Bowerman, a surveyor, and several Libyan helpers. Bowerman was the first to spot the bomber in the distance.

The party removed items from the aircraft including compasses, water, a radio, weapons, navigational gear and numerous other things. Bowerman did not let the matter rest. He took the trouble to visit Lt. Col. Walter B. Kolbus, an American friend stationed at Wheelus Air Base, and, finding that Kolbus was away, followed the visit up with a letter. This letter is what sparked the US investigation in June 1959—4 months after the Lady Be Good was found in the desert and 13 months after she was first spotted from the air.

But for Bowerman, the saga of the Lady Be Good might not have been known for years, if at all.

Except for Charles Hellewell, all of the oilmen connected with the finding of Lady Be Good are alive and well and leading active, retired lives with their families in England, Scotland and Ireland. Gordon Bowerman and his wife Zoe for example, are poised to fly to Tanzania on a short holiday together with their eldest daughter who was born there.

For some of the finders Lady Be Good is a distant, fading memory; for others her story is of constant interest; for all she's still the frozen image of the broken Virgin-Trojan whose guns still stood guard in the wilderness of the Libyan desert.

The Missing Vernon Moore

The remains of Vernon Moore were never found, despite repeated searches in the area of the Libyan desert in which he was thought to have perished. For the moment, where in the Calanscio Sand Sea he died remains a mystery.

The rest of the crew's remains were found in 1959 and 1960 either on the surface of a gravel plain or in the Calanscio Sand Sea. One of the bodies was found by a U.S. search team, and the rest were found accidentally by British and Canadian oil men. This site will have more to say about the Vernon Moore mystery.

Through a source in Great Britain, Mario Martinez has obtained a photograph and other information that may help unlock the mystery of Moore's resting place.

The Moore family has been informed and asked for certain details, but they have chosen to remain silent.