Remnants of a plane at Wright Patterson Air Force Museum hold quite the ghost story. This story comes from Sara’s book Dayton Ghosts & Legends:Lady Be Good – In 1943, 25 B-24Ds of the 376th Bomb Group took off from their base in Libya for an attack against facilities in Naples. All but one returned that night. The one missing was the Lady Be Good. It took nearly 16 years for the plane to be discovered in the Libyan desert. When a ground party reached the plane in March 1959, evidence showed the crew had gotten lost in the dark and flew south over the base into the desert. When the fuel ran out, the men attempted to flee from the plane and head north, back to base.

A long search for the remains returned eight of the nine crew members. One was located near the plane and seven were far north of the plane. Five of the crew had walked 78 miles before succumbing to the desert and one man had gone 109 miles. Additionally, the men had lived for eight days, which was miraculously longer than the two day survival expectation of men in those conditions. No trace of the ninth man was ever found.

The plane was disassembled and various parts were returned to the U.S. for study and others were installed in other aircrafts. All the aircrafts with Lady Be Good parts have experienced significant technical difficulties resulting in crashes or emergency landings. An Army “Otter” airplane with an armrest from the Lady Be Good crashed in the Gulf of Sidra with 10 men aboard. No traces of the men were ever found. One of the very few surviving pieces of debris to wash ashore was the armrest of the Lady Be Good.

A propeller from the Lady Be Goodis on display near the Strawberry Bitch. The nine crew members still report for duty and they are seen walking throughout the halls of the museum, as if recreating their last journey away from the plane. Pieces of the Lady Be Good wreckage displayed in the museum are known to rearrange themselves.