25 February 2011

Lady Be Good

(B-24 Lady Be Good in the Libyan Desert. Official US Air Force picture.)

Forgive me. I have been way too many places this week, and there are way too many things going on in all of them to make much sense of.  

I am OK with most of them, though I feel like I ought to head right back up north, instead of heading 206 miles south to talk to some earnest kids about what the craft of Operational Intelligence (OPINTEL) was like when the Soviets stood ten feet tall and the world was a hell of a lot less complicated.

I looked out on the balcony when I was able to crowbar my way out of the rack. Dark and dank and wet out there, and miles to go.

I cannot distinguish the lingering effects of the wormwood-infused Absinthe, last night’s welcome anesthesia induced by a glass of quality Malbec that I sipped while huddled in my chair watching a movie last night, the Pseudofed I am using to beat back the onset of the first cold of winter, the general sense of achy malaise that goes with the dulling effect of the penetrating cold of the Northland, and the realization that the drive today is going to cost a lot more at the pump than it would have last week thanks to that asshole Muammar Kaddafi and his fulminations against his own people.

My pal John did the after-action report on the last time we took out a fit of pique on Libya. Operation ELDORADO CANYON was a neat piece of work from one aspect, what with the coordination of Air Force units flying out of the UK and Fleet action in the Gulf of Sidra.

There were a lot of lessons-learned about some things that did not go so well. I remember the French Embassy, and the death of an adopted daughter instead of the megalomaniacal Colonel. That is why we had to keep such meticulous records about our Freedom of Navigation maneuvers inside what the Colonel called “the Line of Death.”

The LOD was the straight baseline across the mouth of the Gulf he claimed as “internal waters,” a contention to which we said, emphatically, “Screw you.”

Part of me is back there, thinking of our history with the loony Colonel, and Wheelus AFB, which we used to monitor to see if the MIGS would scramble and come out to play.

I was contemplating the cost of oil, and wandering from the office over to the Cold Remedy aisle of the CVS Pharmacy and could not find the Pseudofed that I thought might dry out my sinuses. I asked the Pharmacist, and she viewed me with suspicion. Apparently it is a non-prescription but controlled substance. I was required to produce my driver’s license so the folks at DEA could track how much of it I purchased.

The problem is, of course, is that the cold remedy is used as the base for methamphetamine production out in the hinterland. The distillation process involves highly volatile chemicals and a lot of really strung out people, so it is not surprising that things go wrong. One of the sheds in back of a neighbor’s house in Mesick, Michigan, was blackened at the end, the roof timbers open to the gray winter sky.

“Meth Lab,” Sunny said phlegmatically, as I prepared to roar off to someplace else in the piece-of-crap Toyota.

The cold was profound in Michigan, and I knew that I was not prepared for it. The northern coast of Africa would be infinitely preferable to the pervasive chill that was driving down my resistance.

Would Libya split into multiple nations? Would the chaos spread to Saudi and get really serious really fast?

Oil had been the game changer in the Maghreb. BP found the black stuff in 1959, and that led directly to the enhanced position of the Kingdom in the wide world. Relations were cordial between the West and the regime of King Idris 1, and the presence of a US facility in the desert was considered a good thing. It was a different world.

We had a Navy facility at Port Lyautey, in Morocco, and some of my pals of a certain age still remember the place fondly.

Anyway, the wanderings of exploration crews from British Petroleum led to one of the haunting stories of my youth, which was the discovery of the B-24 Bomber “Lady Be Good.”  

Flown by a crew on their first combat mission, they were separated from their formation in blowing
sand and darkness.

(Wreckage of the Lady Be Good in the Libyan Desert, 1959. Official US Air Force Picture.)

They overflew their base returning from Naples, and ran out of fuel four hundred miles from anything. They bailed out, and eight of them linked up and tried to walk north. They died along the way but the desiccated climate preserved the parachutes and stone cairns they left in the sand, and the bodies.

Lady Be Good herself flew on for another sixteen miles and landed itself, one engine still operating. A working radio, machine guns, tea and survival rations were still onboard fifteen years later.

Life Magazine did a great story abut it, back in the day when the slick large-format publication arrived in the mailbox. Parts of the wreck were returned to the States, and eventually eight of the nine crewmen were recovered, with the ninth possibly having been interred by a British patrol in 1953 who took no particular note of the encounter, except to do the Christian thing.

In September 1969, Colonel Kaddafi overthrew the King, and then began the long march to today’s crisis began, with nightclub bombings, Pan Am 103 and a major US Military joint strike.

While the U.S. wished to retain Wheelus Air Base, the strategic value of the facility had declined with the development of nuclear missiles that had effectively replaced many bomber bases. Two years before the base agreement was to expire, Kaddafi turned the screws and told us to get out in December 1969.

We cordially complied, destroying the plumbing fixtures that Kaddafi refused to pay for.

Following the U.S. withdrawal, the base was renamed Okba Ben Nafi Airfield, and was used both by the Libyans and the Soviets. I think it was on my contingency target list one time. There were so many targets, though, I can’t be sure.

It certainly was on someone’s. For old times sake, we struck the former USAF base during ELDORADO CAYON.

Today, it is named Mitiga International Airport, and dazed as I am this morning, I really couldn’t tell you who owns it.

That, and the price of oil, will sort itself out today, I guess. I will stay glued to the radio in the Hubrismobile and time my fuel stops accordingly.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
vicsocotra.com | Subscribe to the RSS feed!