In 1941-42, America was desperate for aircrews and the Air Corps began recruiting from the tender ranks of teenagers. This meant that wings were being given to high-school graduates as young as 18. So severe was the need for aviators that pilot-training courses were cut to seven and a half months. Many of these trainees reported to flying school on Saturday and were up and flying on Monday.

Aviation cadet William Hatton was deemed an old man when he took pilot training in 1942; he was 25.

Originally trained as a fighter pilot, the decision to convert him to a bomber pilot was not only a disappointment, but a mystery to him.

Hatton was a warm, decent man with an open heart who wrote letters to his mother, Rose, constantly. Among them was a one describing how he, his wife Millie, and fellow-flyers had met Bing Crosby.

And the cadet destined to be his co-pilot, Robert F. Toner, who qualified as a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force before America joined the war, was a year older than Hatton. Although Toner had more than 200 flying hours, he had to qualify all over again for Uncle Sam. Both he and Hatton were devout Catholics.

Another officer fated for Hatton's crew was Navigator Dp Hays. A former bank clerk, he was never given a first name’Äîjust the letters Dp. He was 23, balding, and what little hair he had was turning grey. One of three children, the diminutive Dp came by this name because his father's Christian names were David Peter’Äîso he simply became Dp. The crew called him 'Deep'.

Yet another"old man"’Äîat 26’Äîwas Bombardier John S. Woravka, from Cleveland, Ohio. The crew called him "Lefty."

This core group of officers, all with the rank of Lieutenant, were to be called "Pops" by their younger colleagues.

Harold Ripslinger, 22, was to be Hatton's flight engineer. He had graduated from his training with Vernon Moore, 21, who was also to be in Hatton's crew.

Ripslinger, from Saginaw, Michigan, was a powerful youth of strong Catholic beliefs and Moore, from New Boston, Ohio, was slight and somewhat shy. He has been described as looking like a young Roddy McDowell, the actor.

Three other enlisted men in training at the time were also to join Hatton. Robert LaMotte, 25, Guy Shelley, 26, and Samuel Adams, 24, were all gunners, and LaMotte too was a strict Catholic. LaMotte, from Lake Linden, Michigan was of French/Canadian extraction.

Shelley, a strapping six footer from near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, overcame early-life ill health, flourished physically and continues to astonish survival experts¬Ýwith his stamina. Adams, from Eureka, Illinois was born in Speedwell, Kentucky and had recently become a father’Äîthe only member of the crew with offspring.¬ÝHe had a strong Protestant faith. (Note: in photo above, Shelley issecond from the right kneeling with left hand visible. Perhaps he was fond of trains because, at least in Topeka, he appears always to have worn a striped railroad engineer’Äôs cap. No one seemed to mind that he was out of uniform.)

Thus, in late 1942, the nine men composed of four officers and five sergeants converged by various routes toTopeka, Kansas, for training as a crew.

Since they were all above the average age of crews at the time, they must have been pleased with the nine sets of orders that had brought them together by chance.

Whether they were pleased or displeased by the extra 50% pay they received for "hazardous flying duties" is another matter. But it certainly had to make them think: the threat of death always concentrates the mind wonderfully.

Hatton and his men were assigned to the 367th Bomb Group and were posted to Soluch, Libya. When they arrived around the 18th of March, the B-24 they flew in was given to a more experienced crew because there were more crews than planes. This left Hatton and company without a ship. For a time, the Hatton crew was in limbo.

After a few days the crew were sent out on a familiarization mission, after which they were checked out to be proficient and ready for action. This, thankfully, was one less worry for Col. Keith K. Compton, the youthful Commanding Officer of the 376th.

A rust-colored B-24 Liberator, soon to be named "Lady Be Good," was flown into Soluch on March 25th, about a week after the arrival of Hatton and his men. The pilot was Lt. Samuel Dawson Rose.

Who named the ship is unknown, but it was not Rose nor any of his crew. The name more likely came from a member of one of the ground crews.

On April 4th, Hatton and his crew received their first call to action. Sam Rose and his crew were in Malta with engine trouble on another Liberator, and the Lady Be Good was at Soluch, standing idle.

The squadron needed a replacement crew, and Hatton's got the call.

They were to go on a 25-plane high-altitude raid on Naples, Italy, in daylight and without fighter escort, to arrive at the target just at sunset.

They would then turn for home under cover of darkness.

The trip to Naples and back would take 11 hours, and the Liberators had 12 hours of fuel.

The Lady Be Good's serial number was 1-24301 and her mission was number 109. She flew in Section B, Squadron 514, 376th Bomb Group, 9th Air Force. Her squadron number was a big 64 on either side of her nose.

The last anyone on the ground saw of the Lady Be Good was at takeoff. This was a member of the ground crew at Soluch Airfield, a private named Richard R. Dahlstedt.

In a letter to Mario Martinez, author of Lady's Men, Dahlstedt said: "Of the takeoff from the terrible Soluch field I can describe only that she seemed reluctant to become airborne. She had to struggle to get off the ground."

The Lady Be Good lumbered into the sky and for the next 15 years, what happened to her remained a perplexing mystery.



Mission 109 began with takeoff from Soluch Airfield at 1.30 p.m. in the midst of a sandstorm blowing north from the Sahara.

The sandstorm created many problems for the Liberators and the two sections that comprised it were scattered. Many of the ships in the Lady Be Good's section were forced to return to base with bad engines. The Lady Be Good was one of the last bombers to take off at 3:10 p.m.’Äîbut her engines seemed to have none of the problems of the preceding planes.

Severe winds caused the Lady Be Good to be separated from the other ships, changing her route to Naples to an arching approach from the east. By the time she had reached Naples it was night; the other Liberators had come and gone.

Just before 9 p.m. she turned for home, and at 10 p.m. she dropped her bombs in the Mediterranean. At this point she was right on course for Soluch.

At around midnight, April 4-5, 1943, the Lady Be Good flew over or very near Soluch and continued southeast over the Libyan desert. She had called her base for help but somewhere at this juncture a critical mixup occurred.

Flares, however, did go up from Soluch.

By 2 a.m. the Lady Be Good had flown 400 miles since overflying her base and she was now running out of fuel, so her crew bailed out into the darkness thinking they were still over the Mediterranean.

Having hit the desert floor with a thump’Äîand not the Mediterranean with a splash’Äîthe surprised crew gathered in the desert gloom to discover that while they were all unhurt, John Woravka, the bombardier, was missing.

They called out in the darkness but he was nowhere to be found. It was clear to everyone what had happened; they had overflown their base. It had to be near, they thought. They would walk northwest. Along the way they were sure to find Woravka.

But they had to get a move on; they had little water and no food to speak of. Better start now before the sun comes up’Äîthen it would be hell.

The crew, now down to 8, discarded what they didn't need and moved on. They didn't realize that their ship, with food, water and a radio on board was only 16 miles to the south of them.

With little to sustain them and with the sun draining their lives away, the flyers struggled northwest for five days. They were down to skin and bone, and they paused often to hold group prayers.

They had not found Woravka, nor would they. He had been killed when his parachute failed to open, and his broken body was only four-tenths of a mile from the point where his comrades had gathered in the darkness after bailout.

By Friday, April 9th, five of the crew could go no further and collapsed. They had walked 78 miles and were close to the Calanscio Sand Sea and its tall, menacing dunes.

Only Moore, Ripslinger and Shelley had the strength to go on. They thought their base lay just beyond the sand dunes, so into the dunes they went. They didn't realize that their base was still hundreds of miles away, and that for them the dunes were the jaws of death’Äîand that they and their comrades should have walked south after bailout and not northwest.

Within three days they and the rest of the ship's crew would all be dead.

The war raged on for a few more years, then ended. The Lady Be Good and her crew vanished in the cracks of aviation history.



On February 27, 1959, British oilmen found the Lady Be Good in the Libyan Desert some 400 miles from Soluch. The American search that followed answered many mysteries, but others still persist. All the remains of the Lady's crew were subsequently found except those of Vernon Moore.

What follows is an examination of the events surrounding the disappearance and discovery of the Lady Be Good.