Qidan, The Lost City of King Ad: Hoax or Reality?

In the middle of World War II a Royal Air Force (RAF) transport plane flying off course over the Arabian desert found a ‘lost city’ deep in the Empty Quarter. It was never seen again. Or was it?

In 1944 an RAF pilot flying a routine two hour trip in a Lockheed Lodestar cargo trans­port going from Salalah in southern Oman to Muscat lost his bearings, and instead of flying east over the gravel plains and mountains of southern Oman, flew north and found himself lost deep in the Empty Quarter before eventually reaching the coat of the Arabian Gulf and landing, almost out of fuel, at an RAF base in Sharjah in the northern Emirates.