In April of 1943, a plane known as the Lady Be Good took to the skies over Libya for a military mission in Naples, Italy.

Later that evening, communication abruptly stopped and the whereabouts of the plane and its crew wouldn't be known for almost two decades.

When it was finally learned what happened, it was far more horrifying than anyone could have imagined.

This is the disturbing disappearance of the Lady Be Good, and as always, viewer discretion is advised.

On April 4, 1943, the world was in the midst of World War II and it was still more than

two years away from coming to an end.

On a small airstrip known as Sluge near Benghazi, Libya, pilot William Hatton sat in a brand

new airplane that was about to take off for its first ever flight with a crew of nine aboard.

Williams B-24D Liberator aircraftcraft was one of 28 belonging to the US being sent on a bombing mission over Naples, Italy that day.

His plane was assigned to the second of a two-wave attack, so Williams would be one of the last planes to take off from Sluge that day,

and the instructions for the mission were simple.

Take off, fall into formation

with the planes ahead of them, and bomb strategic targets in the Italian harbor to cut off

supplies and reinforcements from coming into Naples. It's less often discussed when the

topic of World War II comes up, but North Africa was a critical theater for both Allied

and Axis forces. Fighting in the region began June of 1940 and continued until

1943 with almost 400,000 combined casualties for both sides in the campaign.

The area's geographic location made it strategically important for the allies to control access

into, out of, and over the Mediterranean Sea, and countries like Libya, Algeria, and Egypt

were perfectly positioned for launching aerial campaigns to keep access powers from concentrating

around the Mediterranean. In fact, had the Allies not one control of North Africa, the all-important

invasion of Sicily in the summer of 1943 that led to the fall of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini may have never occurred.

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