The Flight of Sergeant Meyer

When Paul Meyer attended the Missouri Military Academy seven years ago, it occurred to the school president. Colonel Charles Stribling Jr., that he seemed a bit like Huckleberry Finn. Last week Air Force Sergeant Meyer, 23, a Viet Nam veteran and crew chief of four-engine C-130 Hercules transports, took off on a kind of raft Huck Finn never dreamed of. Unfortunately, he did not manage so happy an ending.

Three days after passing an Air Force "human reliability test" with good marks in February, Meyer was sent to England for temporary duty. He left his wife and three children behind in the rural town of Poquoson, Va. One night last week, Meyer went into Freckenham, a Suffolk town near the Mildenhall air base, got drunk at a party attended by other servicemen and found himself arrested by a constable. He was taken back to the base and put to bed. Although Meyer was under orders not to leave his barracks, about 5 a.m. he got up and sneaked out of his billet. He showed his identification card to a guard and walked onto the two-mile-long runway No. 29.

Life Raft and Oil Slick. He climbed into one of his squadron's 60-ton, $2.3 million airplanes, revved up the engines and started taxiing around. As crew chief, he was authorized to do so. Keeping the plane in proper operating condition was his responsibility, and crew chiefs generally have a free hand with aircraft while on the ground. But suddenly he pointed the plane's nose down the runway and took off. Though the plane normally requires a flight crew of four, Meyer seemed to know what he was doing. He had some experience piloting light planes, and worked some 500 hours on C-130s. Before takeoff, he had taken on enough fuel to fly for 15 hours--more than enough to get him across the Atlantic.

Meyer flew in widening circles, climbing to 18,000 ft. Royal Air Force radar picked up the Hercules near Cherbourg, on the Normandy coast. Six chase planes went up in pursuit but lost radar contact almost instantly. Nearly an hour after his takeoff, Meyer called in to ask that he be put in touch with his wife by radiotelephone. The Air Force complied. "I am heading home," he told her. Then he radioed: "I'm having trouble with my automatic pilot. Leave me alone for five minutes. I'm having trouble." That was the last word anyone heard from the sergeant.

Next day, in the English Channel only five miles from the spot where Meyer's C-130 disappeared from radar screens, a British helicopter picked up an empty life raft which Air Force officials identified as coming from the missing airplane. An oil slick and several black metal panels turned up floating nearby. There was no trace of Sergeant Meyer.

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