[ARC5] Video discussing the loss of the Lady Be Good

[AKLDGUY .]

The crew obviously did not think they were lost, and in fact they weren't.
The plane continued on course over the beacon and headed out into the
desert on that same bearing.

The question that must be asked is why did the navigator and pilot not
realize that the time elapsed was grossly excessive? Why fly a plane
for many, many hours beyond the point at which you would expect to be
'home'.

Permit me to make the following suggestion. At some point along the
return path, maybe the navigator had a mental block and calculated an
ETA based on the time that had elapsed since takeoff instead of from
the time the turn back was made.

Or maybe the navigator asked the pilot for the time the turn was made
and was mistakenly given the takeoff time.

Could that have resulted in an ETA many hours later than what it should
have been? Did the crew get lulled into relying on an erroneous arrival
time instead of questioning the elapsed time?

If that theory is correct, it wouldn't have occurred to the crew that they
had gone too far, so they of course never made any attempt to turn back.
When the fuel got low, they may have thought a shell had caused a fuel
leak and they were still short of their destination. Thus, it was only when
they parachuted onto desert sand that it dawned on them that they had
overflown base, and they started walking back.

73 de Neil ZL1ANM