In a little over
an hour and a half, I top a little rise and there, sitting in front of a big
sand dune, is one of the strangest sights I have ever seen. An American B-24,
World War II bomber is sitting beside a low sand dune, looking as if it has
just landed.
At first, I can’t see any damage to
the plane, but as I get closer, I note a bent landing gear and broken
propellers. I pull up to the side of the plane, where the side door is open,
and crawl into the cargo bay. The plane, which looks intact from the outside,
is completely stripped of anything that can be unbolted or pried off—completely
gutted. I guess the exterior riveting that holds the metal to the plane’s frame
is too tough for the desert Bedouins to handle.
Well, after a few minutes of walking
around the plane, I finally climb into the cockpit and sit imagining what an
American pilot would have thought when he landed here. It must have been a
relief to at least be on the ground in one piece, but considering the crews’
fate a fatal crash landing might have been better.
I’ve seen all there is to see and I
have just climbed out of the cockpit and I’m walking over to where I parked my
Land Rover. As I stand beside my Land Rover, I think about what the men who
survived that landing faced when they scrambled out of the plane. Kufra, the nearest
oasis, is some 100 kilometers [MS1]away—an easy drive for me, since I can drive across the
hard-pack of the desert at 80 KMPH. But trying to walk that distance, in a
blazing, summer sun, is impossible.
In 1959, they found the remains of the crew. None
survived the attempt to walk out of the desert. I want to take a souvenir from
the plane, but everything that can be removed already been taken.
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