Sixteen years of mystery...
The story of this bomber is perhaps the most tragic of the last war. Freshly arrived from the USA with a brand-new crew at Soluch base on the Libyan-Egyptian border, this Liberator 24 D, serial number 41-24301, was part of the 376th Bomb Group... Another B24 (a J), serial number 42-73074, also bore the same name...
On April 4, 1943, returning from an attack mission on the port facilities of Naples - in Italy - it veered off course, missing the Benghazi airport and plunging straight into the desert 600 km to the south! Running out of fuel, the crew engaged the autopilot and parachuted out, dropping the dynghis and believing they were still above the sea.
They lasted nine days in the desert, each drinking a teaspoon of water every 24 hours. The strongest of them managed to walk 144 km! The search is on, but far too far north, over the ocean... On November 9, 1958, an oil research aircraft flying over Tobruk reported a large aircraft wreck lying on the sand. It wasn't until February 1960 that a precarious camp with the remains of five bodies was discovered on the edge of the sand dunes. Two further crew members were discovered much further away, much later. In August, another body was found, that of the sergeant who was killed during the evacuation of the aircraft, his parachute having failed to open. His colleagues never saw him again in their lifetime, and curiously enough, a three-quarters-full bottle of water lay next to him, seventeen years later! The ninth crew member is still somewhere under the desert sands...
The reconstruction was made possible by the discovery of the men's logbooks. As for the aircraft, they never got close to it, and it came down even further south than their drop-off point. When we inspected the wreckage, the radio was still working, as were the machine guns, and all the crew's belongings were on board, intact. And there was an almost full thermos of coffee! We know that desert dwellers don't touch shipwrecks for fear of ghosts. Perhaps that's why the plane was discovered so late... A little background: a 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone - Season 2 - Episode 1 - King Nine Will Not Return tells the story of a bomber pilot (in this case a B25 Mitchell) who finds himself in the middle of the desert beside his abandoned plane, searching for his crew; a story inspired by the crash of Lady by Good...
The model is the MONOGRAM B24-D in 1/48th scale. It has been fully modified based on documentation of the actual wreckage...
