Lady's Men: The Story of World War II's Mystery Bomber and Her Crew

by Mario Martinez

Paperback

Genres: Nonfiction, World War II, History

196 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1994

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating story of the Lady Be Good bomber and its crew, lost in action during a bombing run to Italy from Libya during World War II. The aircraft's and crew's destiny wasn't revealed until years later when the wreckage was found deep in the Saharan desert of southeastern Libya. Their struggle for survival in the desert following the crash was detailed in a diary found among their remains.

I lived in Libya for three years when my Dad was stationed at the Air Force base in Tripoli (the three years before Kaddafi came on the scene in 1970). I saw the memorials located there to the crew of the Lady Be Good, including the stained glass window in the base chapel.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A detailed account of the mysterious B-24 bomber LADY BE GOOD which disappeared on its first bombing run in 1943 and wasn't found until it turned up in the Libyan desert in 1959. This is a much more detailed account than the first book on the topic, THE LADY BE GOOD, by Dennis McClendon, though McClendon's book is much more elegantly written and doesn't indulge in fantasy ruminations on what went through the minds of the air crew as they wandered lost in the desert. (These ruminations, several of them religious and perhaps not coincidentally aligned with the Roman Catholic connections of the author himself, are not labeled as being products of the author's imagination, but they are nowhere to be found in the written record the lost crew left of their last days.) What serves this book well are the details of the assemblage and background of the crew, of the first (and last) raid they went on to bomb Naples, Italy, the reconstructed period between the crew's abandoning ship over Libya and their deaths after a heroic and magnificent trek through the desert, and the discovery and recovery of the plane and its crew more than 16 years later. What doesn't serve is the repetition and the extensive coverage of an interesting but relatively unrelated air raid that occurred several months after the loss of the LADY BE GOOD. Anyone interested in this haunting story would do well to read both books.