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Lady be Good


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Bizarrely, I don't believe any have ever been done in any scale. Probably one of the two or three most famous B-24s in history, and I'm not aware of any decals for it.

Anyone know differently?

J

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Hey Jennings,

It is true, that plane was one of the most famous B-24 of entire WWII, and until today I dont know any decal sheet to make him in scale, maybe for sentimental reasons, I dont know... but I consider a truly tribute if you build a crashed plane, you isn't just building something creepy, I believe that doing this I'll be building a tribute to all those lost their lives in that crash... someday I'll do the same with the N310EA Whisperliner who crashed in Everglades in late '72.

So, if anyone has an idea, please feel free to speak.

Greetings.

JM

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Yep, for some reason no one has ever done decals for LBG. Most of the markings would be fairly simple to replicate..just six-point star-in-circle insignia and a serial number on the tail. She carried a "script style" number "64" on the nose..you could probably source those from the model railroad section. The biggest problem is the nose art, which is the name in white cursive letters (I've seen a couple pics taken in the 60s when it was still visible..by the 70s it had pretty much weathered away.) Somewhere I've got a snapshot someone took "back in the day" that shows the name..I'll try to dig it up and post it. Fortunately, the original was painted in large letters with a brush, so you could probably hand-paint it without too much difficulty.

SN

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Yep, for some reason no one has ever done decals for LBG. Most of the markings would be fairly simple to replicate..just six-point star-in-circle insignia and a serial number on the tail. She carried a "script style" number "64" on the nose..you could probably source those from the model railroad section. The biggest problem is the nose art, which is the name in white cursive letters (I've seen a couple pics taken in the 60s when it was still visible..by the 70s it had pretty much weathered away.) Somewhere I've got a snapshot someone took "back in the day" that shows the name..I'll try to dig it up and post it. Fortunately, the original was painted in large letters with a brush, so you could probably hand-paint it without too much difficulty.

SN

Hy Steve,

You gave me an excellent idea, as the name was hand painted on the actual aircraft, I really could paint it on the model with those tamiya pens, isn't it!? Or just to make things easier, I could test several times in a paper sheet until I get satisfied with the writing, and just after that, write directly in a piece of clear decal sheet with a white pen, seal everything with a clear coat and apply the decal in the normal way... maybe this will work.

I'll search for some references of the actual aircraft, and, if someone have some images, please, post'em here, maybe will help another one with the same idea as me.

Thanks Steve.

JM.

Edited by Jose Maria
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Here they are. These were posted a few years ago on Warbird Information Exchange, by a gentleman whose uncle visited the wreck back in the 60s during a military exercise (When we were still on friendly terms with Libya, and had an AF base there.) You can just barely make out the word "Good" below and ahead of the cockpit..I've punched it up in Photoshop to make it as visible as possible. The color is hard to determine..the letters appear to have both light and dark tones. My original thought was that the name was in white, and the dark tones were remnants of the original OD camouflage. But the more I look at it, the more it appears the name may have originally been in black.

Cheers!

Steve

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Edited by Steve N
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I remember the LBG from when I was a kit and seem to remember that there was a kit of her produced at some point in time. This would have been in the early to mid '60s. I may well be wrong but I do seem to remember such a kit, probably in 1/72.

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I don't remember them doing the Lady Be Good. The earliest one I remember building is Revell's Blue Streak from the 376th Bomb Wing, and that was in the 60s.

It's amazing how far they got considering the conditions they faced. One crew member has never been found.

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I don't remember them doing the Lady Be Good. The earliest one I remember building is Revell's Blue Streak from the 376th Bomb Wing, and that was in the 60s.

It's amazing how far they got considering the conditions they faced. One crew member has never been found.

I remember building the "Blue Streak" too ('72?), and reading about LBG when I was a kid. If memory serves me correctly, didn't Shep Paine do a diorama of LBG that was featured in his diorama book?

Warren

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IIRC there were two crew members whose bodies were never found. The copilot was found along with his diary. He and several others lasted about the longest, surviving something like a week and managing to make it some 70 miles. Investigators figure the last two kept going, but got into an area of shifting dunes which simply swallowed them up. The sad thing is, had the crew made an effort to locate the wreck, they probably could have radioed for help, and would have had enough supplies to give them a decent change to survive. Heck, if the only reason they bailed out was because it was dark and they thought they were still over the Mediterranean. If they'd known what the terrain was like below, they could have made a normal landing. That's in no way meant to diminish the crew's fortitude or sacrifice..they did the best they could, and more than most of us probably could have managed.

What's left of the wreckage was removed from the crash site back in the mid 90s, and is now stored in a police compound in Tripoli. Over the years the wreck was stripped of virtually everything that could be removed. What's left is an empty shell, and even that was badly ripped apart by souvenir hunters. I'd like to see her preserved in some form, but there's really not enough left to make a full restoration viable..you'd end up with essentially a new-built aircraft with a few original parts. It might interesting to put her in some sort of "as found" diorama setup, but even then you'd have to track down a lot of parts to make her look even remotely complete.

I remember first reading about The Lady when I got Lloyd Jones' B-24 book back in gradeschool. I was captivated by the story, and was awed when I saw some pieces of her on display at the USAF Museum a few years later. Here's one of her engines..most of the Desert Sand paint is gone, leaving the original Olive Drab (probably more due to handling than actual exposure to weather.)

SN

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IIRC there were two crew members whose bodies were never found.

I think all but one were found and even the last one may have unknowingly been found but still lost to history unfortunately. Seems I remember running across something on the vast internet that made mention of a "body" being found and buried as an unknown and the party that found him unfortunately did not note the exact location for whatever reason. I want to say that it was also BEFORE the wreck itself had even been discovered, so it did not occur to the finding party of the importance of the identity. They apparently just thought it was somebody from the war that deserved a proper burial. Given where the party believed they were at the time, I want to say that the location where the body was found was like 120(?) or 150(?) miles possibly from where they had all initially landed and was in that area of shifting sands. Which would be a pretty dang miraculous story of survival in those conditions if this person was in fact one of the LBG crew!

Can't remember the details for the part on when the other guy was found, but I do think there's only one still unaccounted for. I could be wrong though.

Edit: Just realized that the link above http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Be_Good_(aircraft) alludes to some of what I was mentioning above.

Also, just found a couple of related old shows you all might like to watch:

"Sole Survivor"

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7574338161920794843#

"King Nine Will Not Return"

http://www.megavideo.com/?v=ZQQ7LA4V

Edited by J.C. Bahr
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Tbanks..I hadn't heard the story about the discovery of the unidentified body. If he did make it that far, it's absolutely incredible. I can't help but wonder how many other similar stories there were from WWII, but we'll never know because the aircraft and crew were never found. How many poor aircrew simply listed as Missing/Presumed Dead actually drifted for days or weeks in liferafts before succumbing, or fell after trudging through miles of acrtic wilderness or trackless jungle?

I think it was just last yaer that some climbers stumbled on the frozen remains of a couple of aircrew in the mountains out west..they'd disappeared on a training flight during the war.

SN

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I hadn't heard the story about the discovery of the unidentified body.

I found it! Go here: http://www.ladybegood.com/ and look down the left side for the link that says "Vernon Moore?" Although in re-reading it, it doesn't sound like he made it as far as either Ripslinger or Shelley.

This is a neat site and it does mention that the rest were found in 1959/60.

I hear what you're saying about other similar stories. I just watched the two shows I linked above, as I had never seen them before... and even though totally fictionalized similar accounts... I was also thinking about what Toner wrote in his diary and it's really poignant to stop and think what those poor souls went through out there. May they truly be at peace now and may their particular story never be forgotten! :jaw-dropping:

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Actually, there was a set of decals for "Lady Be Good" put out by White Dog Decals a number of years back. But of course they are long out of production and seem to be impossible to find (and I've been looking!). Don Fenton did the art work. He also mentioned that the reason the name appears to be dark and light is that as the various layers of paint were stripped down by the blowing sand, it eventually revealed the OD under the white of the name and the sand color. IIRC

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the reason the name appears to be dark and light is that as the various layers of paint were stripped down by the blowing sand, it eventually revealed the OD under the white of the name and the sand color

That was kind of my working hypothesis as well. The only reason I considered that it may have been in black is because in the photos I posted it looks like a lot of the Desert Sand paint on the fuselage is still intact. It's hard to tell..the snapshots are overexposed and faded, but they're the only one's I've ever seen that show the name. For some reason almost all the photos taken during the early surveys of the wreck only show the left side of the nose section (in the few I've seen of the right side the name doesn't show up because it's either in shadow or the angle is bad.) You'd think someone would have wanted a picture of the name for historical purposes, but in those days nobody much cared about markings documentation. I'm sure no one imagined that 50 years later model builders would argue endlessly about such minutia.

<edit> I did some trolling around the interwebs, and came up with a couple more photos that show the name a bit more clrearly (but no less weathered.) Looks like it was most likely white, although I'm at a loss to explain why the OD underneath is much darker than the exposed OD on other parts of the airframe. Maybe the opacity of the relatively thick hand-brushed white protected it better than the thin sprayed-on Desert Tan. I suppose it's also possible that the name was painted in black with a white outline (with the white background painted first.)

SN

LadyBeGood-02.jpg

LADYBEGOOD-V1-1.jpg

Edited by Steve N
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That was kind of my working hypothesis as well. The only reason I considered that it may have been in black is because in the photos I posted it looks like a lot of the Desert Sand paint on the fuselage is still intact. It's hard to tell..the snapshots are overexposed and faded, but they're the only one's I've ever seen that show the name. For some reason almost all the photos taken during the early surveys of the wreck only show the left side of the nose section (in the few I've seen of the right side the name doesn't show up because it's either in shadow or the angle is bad.) You'd think someone would have wanted a picture of the name for historical purposes, but in those days nobody much cared about markings documentation. I'm sure no one imagined that 50 years later model builders would argue endlessly about such minutia.

Hi Steve,

Here's a link to the remains of LBG:

Link to LBG images as she exists now

Take note that the radio call number on the right vertical stabilizer remains yellow. After all those years of exposure, the sand paint applied over the base OD has mostly disappeared perhaps taking the black numbers with it. In Martinez's "Lady's Men", there is an image of the Sgt. Nelson standing under the national insignial on the left side of the then unnamed LBG while she was still in the ZI. In this image, the radio call number on the vertical stabilzer appears dark, likely black. The use of black for the radio call numbers is consistent with images of other squadron aircraft and theater requirements. Also, Col. W. F. Rubertus, who visited the crash site and extensively studied the wreck and the site, indicated that the lettering on the nose was yellow and exposed parts of the name were heavily weathered due to the orientation of the wreck in relationship to prevailing winds (blowing sand). Another detail often overlooked, was the application of a small "368" in black script on both sides of the nose. This was probably a transfer or shipping number.

There is a remarkable image in the Time archive showing an early B-24D being repainted in Sand directly over the base OD. In the image, no effort seems to have been made to mask off anything except the clear areas and the national insignia, not even the de-icer boots got masked. The radio call numbers were most likely reapplied after the Sand paint was applied. Reapplication of maintenance markings? Good question. I'd post a copy of the image but for the "Time" logo on the image. Sorry, I did not keep the link to the image.

Once I get past a severe case of modeler's block, I have a 1/72 model of LBG to complete from my stack of projects. Nice images of LBG.

Don

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Its entirely possible that I have the LBG confused in my mind with the Blue Streak, which I also remember. I may well have confused the two since its been many, many years since that time. I built a lot of 1/72 fighters and bombers when I was first modeling and I always really liked the four engined heavies. I find that now, as much as over 4 decades later, that is coming back to me. I've concentrated on floaty things since I came back to modeling a couple of years ago and I had forgotten how much fun planes were.

Bob

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Hey Don, looking at the pictures Steve has posted, it looks like the G in "GOOD" is not capitalized. Makes ya wonder about the rest of it...

Definitely not a cursive capital "G". We may never definitively know how the the other words looked.

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Thanks for the photos, Don. They're the clearest I've seen of the wreckage in its current state. Naturally, it looks like the side of the nose with the name is against a wall, preventing it from being photographed or examined (assuming enough of the skin and paint is still intact to show anything.)

While I was trolling around the net looking for pics, I found a travelogue with pics of the crash site in its current state. It appears some subsantial bits of wreckage were left behind: at least one bomb bay door, some structural bits, and what appears to be part of a horizontal and vertical (it's so badly hacked up it's hard to tell.)

Every now and then the subject of LBG comes up over on the Warbird Information Exchange, and invariably there is a hue and cry to return the aircraft to the U.S. and fully restore her. Looking at those pics it's obvious that you'd end up with an aircraft containing maybe 25% original parts. I would like to see what's left of her properly conserved, but a restoration, even to an "as found" state, would obliterate what little original history is left.

SN

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Hy guys,

Does anyone knows if a decal sheet to make a 48th scale "Lady be Good" B-24D exists?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Be_Good_(aircraft)

If yes, wich manufacturer and where is suposed to find one?

Thanks in advance by any help.

Cheers

JM

Hello JM

I found this and thought you may be inteested in it..the photos in the book are very comprehmesive and using the arrows you can turn the pages there are over 33 pages or more and each one has a photos of the LADY BE GOOD and I think it is very interesting..

allow the link to load and it is best if you can view it on large screen and using the arrows turn the pages..AMAZING PICS ...some good ideas for diorama looking at the crashd LBG.

LINK:

http://www.richarddavisphotography.com/?p=411

HOLMES :thumbsup:

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Every now and then the subject of LBG comes up over on the Warbird Information Exchange, and invariably there is a hue and cry to return the aircraft to the U.S. and fully restore her.

Hehehe... funny you should mention that. Many years ago I had the chance of talking with the chief mechanic for David Tallichet, who told me a story of how Tallichet had once got it in his head that he wanted to pull the engines off of "Delectable Doris" (B-24 now in Kermit Week's collection) and go over to Libya, hook them up to LBG and "fly her out!" Must've not been too well versed on her physical condition! :thumbsup:

For anyone that gets the chance to go to the National Museum of the USAF in Dayton (and if it is still on display), there's a neat painting I saw once that somebody did of LBG just seconds away from impacting the desert floor. Would've been quite the sight I'm sure if anyone had been there to witness it.

At least the NMUSAF has the engine on display from her. Just one of the many interesting artifacts to be found in that vast place!

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I found this and thought you may be inteested in it..the photos in the book are very comprehmesive

Wow..those are the best photos I've ever seen of the wreck. Too bad nobody photographed her that thoroughly (and in color) before she was so badly stripped and hacked up. It's hard to tell from the small preview pics, but it looks like somebody chopped out the fuselage skin where the name was painted..so I guess that ends any chance of analyzing the colors. I'm actually somewhat amazed at how much the wreck was ripped apart over the years. Considering how remote it was, and the extreme environment, you'd have to be a pretty dedicated souvenir hunter to bring the equipment and make the effort necessary to cause that much destruction to the airframe.

Tallichet had once got it in his head that he wanted to pull the engines off of "Delectable Doris" and go over to Libya, hook them up to LBG and "fly her out!"

Back in the '80s the guys who first went looking for the "lost squdron" in Greenland had a similar idea. They figured the P-38s and B-17s would still be just sitting there, and all they'd have to do is brush off the snow, make some repairs, and fly them out. Of course, eventually one Lighting was recovered from beneath 250 feet of ice and restored as "Glacier Girl." But the difference is she was complete and hadn't suffered any vandalism. Even so, I'm sure GG has a significant amount of "new build" components.

SN

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Interesting topic on an interesting piece of history that I've enjoyed reading about especially with the supposed "curse". The reason I though I would reply is just to let you all know (in case you already didn't) that the Lady Be Good is no longer at her desert resting place. The Lybians actually recovered the wreckage and have it stored in some compound. I saw a picture of it but I can't remember where I saw this at. I'll try to look for it and post a link. If someone else can back this up, that'll work too.

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