Many thanks, Author of This Site. Really well written!

I’ve researched the flight on and off through the years and one mysteries that nags me is the fact of speed and time. I’m aware that the crew was brand new with no experince, and how this fact could cause the Nav.. officer to be confused. It’s documented that the radio op requested an airstrip HF radio bearing at or about 24:00 (midnight). The loop attanna of the radio op could read in reverse if not operated correctly. The home bearing for the flight from Naples would have been 330 degrees. In there found location it would have indicated 150 degrees, the exact reverse of 330 degress. If you follow the 330 bearing from the airstrip it leads directly 440 miles to the crash site. From this: one can only assume the Nav officer, pilot, co-pilot and radio op all thought they were still out at sea . I find this highly unlikely. Someones alarm bells would have had to go off and I think someone did. Being the Capt. is the boss, I think he over ruled any objections made by the crew and assumed the radio direction reading of 150 should have been 330 and continued upon that heading for two more hours ending at 02:00 with fuel gone.

The fact is, that given a round trip flight time, from their base to Naples, in perfect conditions of around 6 hours and being when the radio direction was taken at 24:00, (9 hours) all the crew would have had to be out of there minds not to know they had crossed their air base and the 150 degree reading most certainly could not be in error. At this point I can only think that the error had to be with the Capt. Any thoughts anyone?

I wouldn’t worry about the Med. It’s 2.5 million square kilometers with an average depth of 1500 meters. A B-24 bomb load would’ve created about as much contamination as tossing a hand grenade in the Persian Gulf. Just imagine the nasty stuff belched into the world’s oceans from undersea volcanoes.
Besides, the bombs would likely detonate on impact; better there than in the belly of The Lady upon ditching. Also, Lt. Hatton needed to lighten the load and conserve fuel.
As a pilot I can’t imagine being in that situation.
It was a sad ending for a courageous crew and a mighty aircraft.”[/quote]

If they were able to make it ~400 miles past their destination before running out of fuel I dont think they needed to lose the bomb’s weight to have enough fuel to make the trip; even though they flew a longer distance than they expected, because of the winds that blew them off course.

You say its better that the bombs explode in the water than in the plane upon ditching but they werent expecting to ditch. They were expecting to make it back to the base so why not save the bombs for the future?

Simply because the earth spews into the oceans does not mean humans need to. Two “wrongs” dont make a right.