Stolen C-130

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Woody
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Stolen C-130

#1 Post by Woody » Wed Apr 18, 2018 6:53 am

Just found this on BBC website, new to me, anyone remember this?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-43800089
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Re: Stolen C-130

#2 Post by Cacophonix » Wed Apr 18, 2018 7:12 am

Fascinating story and not heard by me before at least. American aircraft mechanics seem to have a tradition of doing this and spawning mysteries...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Ango ... appearance
It shouldn’t be so easy to lose an aircraft.

Especially a big old airliner. It was 47 metres (153 feet) long and 10 metres (34 feet) high, with a wingspan of 33 metres (108 feet). Twice the height of a giraffe and four times the length of a London bus.

The aircraft was a Boeing 727, registration N844AA, and it has not been seen in 13 years, despite a worldwide search by US security forces.

It wasn’t a particularly exciting aircraft, in fact it was barely airworthy. Maury Joseph, the president of Aerospace Sales and Leasing, Inc, was the effective owner. In 2001, he owned three 727s which had been retired by American Airlines, all three in almost mint condition.

Maury Joseph sold N844AA to a South African entrepreneur, Irwin, for a million US dollars, who wanted it, and a crew, to fulfill a contract to supply fuel to diamond mines in Angola.

Joseph says he was paid $125,000 as a down payment. He removed the passenger seats from the cabin so that it could be installed with ten large fuel tanks. He agreed the aircraft could be taken to Angola but insisted that one of his employees travel with it, so that he could make sure the money came through. On the 28th of February in 2002, still carrying the American Airlines livery, the aircraft departed Miami for Luanda.

It’s unclear what the details of the deal were but certainly, only two payments were ever made. Maury Joseph never got his money.

One of the original crew posted on the Professional Pilot’s Rumour Network (PPRuNe) about their arrival.
84AA.JPG
84AA.JPG (83.86 KiB) Viewed 1313 times
The director of Angola’s civil aviation authority told the Associated Press that the aircraft had been grounded for about a year because it lacked the proper documentation verifying its legal conversion to a tanker. He also said in a radio interview that the aircraft was banned from overflying Angolan territory on account of a series of irregularities.

Certainly, the deal flying the fuel for the diamond mine didn’t work out and another cargo deal seemed to only consist of 17 flights before the crew left. Soon, Maury Joseph’s employee (who was meant to ensure Aerospace Sales and Leasing, Inc got their money) was the only one of the original crew left. Joseph fired him in the spring 2002, as the money was never forthcoming and the employee kept making excuses not to bring the aircraft back.

The aircraft stayed at Luanda, effectively abandoned.

Joseph eventually found a buyer for the engines, which had only had around a thousand cycles and were now the only part of the aircraft with value.

Ben Padilla was a freelance flight engineer who lived in South Florida with his fiancée and two children. He had worked for Maury Joseph before and was happy to take on the job to fly to Angola in April 2003 to pay the outstanding fines and hire local mechanics in order to get the aircraft airworthy. He presumed, correctly, that the South African entrepreneur hadn’t paid any of the bills.

Padilla hired Air Gemini to work with him to restore the 727 to service in Luanda. Within a month, the aircraft was airworthy again.

Padilla hired a pilot and co-pilot from Air Gemini in order to deliver the aircraft to Johannesburg. Padilla had a private pilot’s licence but no commercial licence and was not rated for airliners or jets.

The plan was that Maury Joseph would meet him there with the new customer for the aircraft. Padilla arranged with Air Gemini that, the day before the flight, he would take the aircraft from the hangar to the main runway, so that he could run all three engines up to full power for a systems check.

On the 25th of May, shortly before sunset, Padilla and his hired assistant, John Mikel Mutantu, boarded the aircraft. They ran up the three engines and then, without contacting the Air Traffic Control tower or any clearance, the aircraft began to taxi. The lights were off and the transponder was not transmitting as it “manoeuvred erratically” and entered the runway.

The aircraft went to full power and rumbled down the runway.

Mutantu, who had accompanied Padilla to help him with the aircraft, was not a pilot. Padilla was, but he was only a PPL, he had no experience with large jets. The Boeing 727 was set up for a three-man flight crew.

With lights off and no communication, it took off from the runway, turned southwest, and flew out towards the Atlantic Ocean.
No one ever saw it again.

The following morning, Joseph was waiting in Johannesburg for the delivery of the 727 when Air Gemini phoned him, demanding to know why another crew had flown the aircraft out of Luanda. Joseph must have been very confused about what had happened, but soon after the phone call, he contacted the US Embassy in South Africa to report the stolen plane. He also called his wife, still in Florida, and asked her to inform the FBI.

In the aftermath of 9/11, US intelligence were extremely interested in the 727 and immediately began an international search. President Bush was given daily briefings on the case.

It was no use. Padilla, Mutantu and the 727 had disappeared without a trace.

Padilla’s family believe that there was someone on the aircraft waiting in ambush for Padilla and his helper, and that they were killed or held hostage.

Some thought it was arranged to be stolen by Maury Joseph in order to collect the insurance money. But Joseph says no insurance money was ever paid: in order to file a claim he had to prove that the aircraft had been stolen and with no trace of the aircraft, he had no proof.

In 2005, the FBI closed its case, no closer to solving the mystery.

Journalist Tim Wright has spent a lot of time investigating the mystery and his articles in Air & Space Magazine are well worth reading:

The 727 that Vanished
When Airliners Vanish

The aircraft might have been kept hidden or scrapped, but no trace was ever found. The aircraft was never seen again and none of its parts were ever spotted, although there were many who were looking.

It seems more likely that the aircraft crashed into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after take-off and by the time the search was on in earnest, three days later, all traces had been washed away or had sunk.
https://fearoflanding.com/accidents/the-stolen-boeing/

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Re: Stolen C-130

#3 Post by Brian W May » Wed May 02, 2018 5:50 pm

As a long-time Hercules flight engineer I remember the original incident but anecdotally, within the RAF C130 community, the story went that he was shot down by the USAF.

Certainly the 'tidiest' solution . . .

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Re: Stolen C-130

#4 Post by om15 » Thu May 03, 2018 4:47 pm

Not only was the homesick yank a mechanic with no pilot qualifications, the fact that he flew it solo with no other crew, whilst pissed, is highly impressive.
I have worked for Operators that would have been delighted to employ him as a pilot.

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Re: Stolen C-130

#5 Post by Brian W May » Fri Jun 08, 2018 7:27 pm

May 23, 1969: A drunken U.S. Air Force assistant crew chief, Sgt. Paul Adams Meyer, 23, of Poquoson, Virginia, suffering anxiety over marital problems, started up a Lockheed C-130E Hercules, 63-7789, c/n 3856, of the 36th Tactical Airlift Squadron, 316th Tactical Airlift Wing, on hardstand 21 at RAF Mildenhall and took off in it at 0655 hrs. CET, headed for Langley AFB, Virginia.[68] At least two North American F-100 Super Sabres of the 493d Tactical Fighter Squadron, RAF Lakenheath, a C-130 from Mildenhall, and two RAF English Electric Lightnings were sent aloft to try to make contact with the stolen aircraft.[69] The Hercules flew over the Thames estuary and headed south toward Brighton. After flying over the English Channel, Meyer turned northwest. North of Cherbourg he changed direction, heading south to a point 30 miles north of Alderney.[70] The Hercules crashed into the English Channel off Alderney (5000N, 0205W)[71] ~90 minutes later. In the last transmission from Meyer, to his wife, in a link-up over the side-band radio, he stated "Leave me alone for about five minutes, I've got trouble."[72]There was speculation whether the Hercules was shot down.[70] Some wreckage was recovered but the pilot's body was never found. Meyer had been arrested for being drunk and disorderly earlier in the morning in the village of Freckenham and had been remanded to quarters, but snuck out to steal the Hercules.[73]

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Re: Stolen C-130

#6 Post by Cacophonix » Sat Jun 09, 2018 5:21 am

I listened to actors reading out the British transcript of the radio communication between the USAF, Paul Meyer's wife who had been patched in from the USA and a co-ordinating USAF officer and the whole episode takes on a tragic tone, with it becoming clear that Meyer was close to the end of his rope. Whether he was shot down or simply crashed is a moot point. The transcript reveals that he was under great stress towards the end as he realised what a fix he had got himself into and I found listening to it pretty sad really.

For those in the UK it can be found here
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b39v43

Audio of his wife's telling of her last conversation with Meyer can be found here. The audio should be available to all ops-normalisers wherever they are.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-43800089 (as noted in the OP's entry).


Paul Meyer.jpg
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Completely alone in the cockpit of the stolen 60-tonne, four-engine military transporter plane, an aircraft he was not qualified to fly, the 23-year-old serviceman steeled himself and thrust his throttles forward. Shortly before 05:10 on the dawn of the drizzly, overcast morning of 23 May, he was airborne.

It would have been just after midnight in Virginia, USA when Mary Ann "Jane" Meyer was woken by the telephone ringing.

"Hi honey!" chirped the excited voice of her young husband Paul after she picked up the receiver. "Guess what? I'm coming home!"

Rousing herself from deep sleep, Jane Meyer mumbled something congratulatory and asked him when exactly he and his crew would be returning.

"Now!" he replied triumphantly. "I got a bird in the sky and I'm coming home!"

Jane froze. "You?" she asked incredulously. "You are flying the plane? Oh my God!"

Nearly 50 years on, Mary Ann Jane Goodson, as she is now called, says that conversation, which lasted for more than an hour, still plays over and over in her head.

When she understood that Meyer had gone Awol and that he had stolen the Hercules, she begged him repeatedly to turn back, warning him he'd be severely punished by the military. She cannot remember the last words she said to her husband but she does remember his last words to her very clearly.

"Babe," said Meyer across the radio he'd patched through from the cockpit to the phone network. "I'll call you back in five. I got some trouble."

The line went dead. After an hour and forty-five minutes in flight, Meyer crashed into the English Channel.

A few days later, small pieces of wreckage of the Hercules, including a life raft washed up near the shores of the Channel Island of Alderney. The mechanic's body was never found.

"Why did he crash like that?" Jane asks quietly. "You know, The US Air Force never told me he'd crashed - no one told me he'd crashed - I just got a telegram to say the plane was lost… When he told me he was in trouble, I've surmised the trouble must have been jets that were sent up to take him down… I'm sure I've not been told the whole truth. "

In 1969, of course, the Cold War was at its height. The official US Air Force report into the accident mentions that an F-100 jet fighter was scrambled from RAF Lakenheath shortly after Meyer took off "in an effort to assist him", along with a C-130 from RAF Mildenhall. They were both apparently "unsuccessful in establishing visual or radio contact with him".

Yet Jane says that 20 minutes into her cockpit conversation with her husband, a man's voice came across the line and asked her to keep talking to her husband because they needed to find out where he was.
Hansard, the verbatim reports of proceedings of the House of Common and House of Lords, shows the then-MP for Bury St Edmunds, Eldon Griffiths, demanded to know why the enormous plane was not picked up by US or British radar "for some considerable time".

A robust reply is recorded by John Morris, the minister of defence for equipment, who assured the concerned MP that the Americans informed the Air Defence Operations Centre of RAF Strike Command within minutes of the unauthorised take-off. UK air traffic control had picked up the rogue aircraft on radar within three minutes of take-off, he told the Commons. Jane says her husband told her from the cockpit that he was deliberately flying low to avoid radar detection.

Henry Ayer was just seven when his stepfather was lost over the Channel but still becomes extremely emotional when he recalls the day the Army chaplain came to see his mother to tell her that her husband was lost. The couple had been married for just 55 days.

"I remember my mom just collapsed to the floor like a rag doll," Ayer chokes. "You know, Paul was just a good guy who gave us kids much-needed stability in our lives. He was really mature for his age - he took us hunting, walking the dog together, he sat us round the table at family dinners. So to think our government may have had a hand in it (Paul's death) - well, it's troubling."

The official US report into the accident describes Meyer rather differently - as a man "under considerable emotional distress" who was angry that he'd recently been passed over for promotion.

For the past 30 years, Ayer has battled to get more information from the American authorities. He claims that evidence he twice presented to a USAF attorney was lost and that the subsequent Freedom of Information requests he directed to the USAF were batted away to the CIA, which it said had operated the Hercules. His FOI requests to the CIA have simply been met with silence.

I remind Ayer gently that his stepfather was not qualified to fly the stolen Hercules and that a terrible accident could have ensued if Meyer had crashed onto a village, a school, or a hospital. Might Ayer understand, I ask, if the USAF had ordered the plane to be shot down at sea in the interests of "damage limitation"?

"Absolutely," says Ayer, who still regularly visits a memorial to his stepfather.

"We would be understanding of that. But we need to know conclusively. We need the government to be upfront."

Thousands of miles from Virginia, on a sullen, dank morning in Weymouth, Dorset, Grahame Knott, a seasoned dive charter boat operator, lowers camera and sonar equipment over the stern of his 13m boat.
For 30 years Knott has been diving and studying wrecks on the seabed with Deeper Dorset, a group of divers, and for the past 15 years, he has read everything he can on the story of Paul Meyer, which he admits has "completely sucked" him in.

I n his west London atelier, aviation artist Simon Cattlin is putting the final touches to his oil painting of Meyer's Hercules, which has been commissioned by Deeper Dorset for the airman's family.

There's a terrible sense of foreboding in the scene, with the enormous khaki aircraft flying underneath a threatening black sky. From the cockpit, a tiny vulnerable, pink face is just visible.

"Can you imagine it?" he asks me. "Here was a guy who was a private pilot flying this massive military aircraft completely alone and in bad weather. When I was painting, I was wondering what was he thinking about in that cockpit as he flew over the Channel. He'd have had daylight working for him but not much else."

Cattlin is a private pilot himself and has researched in great detail the meteorological conditions of the morning that the plane went missing. The low cloud, rain and an approaching pressure front, says Cattlin, explain why Meyer didn't just head west immediately to set his course for the States but instead flew south to the Channel.

"If he'd gone immediately west he would have had the terrain hazards of the hills and mountains in Wales," Cattlin tells me, washing the dark paint from his brush in a jam jar of water. "Over the Channel he would have had clear visibility. As a pilot, I would have done the same myself."

Although Meyer was not qualified to fly the Hercules, he was extremely familiar with the plane as its chief mechanic. During our chat together, Jane told me that when flying with his crew, her husband would often be given a turn at the controls. He'd even call her on the radio, claims Jane, while he was flying.

But although Meyer was flying below the cloud level over the Channel, at some point he would have had to start the climb into thinner air for fuel efficiency if he was to make the 3,000-mile journey to Virginia. Could it be that as he climbed into a thick cloud deck, with a head still addled with drink and lack of sleep, that he simply lost control?

"Yes," confirms Cattlin. "With visual cues gone, he could have gone into an uncontrolled descent and hit the water and exploded."

He smiles and looks at his painting pensively for a few seconds.

"But he'd been flying for 90 minutes and there are no reports that he was flying out of control. He'd shown competency and shown he had a plan. I wouldn't say he'd done a good job - you can't say what he did (stealing an aircraft) is a good job - but I'd say he was credible as a pilot."

In their home in Virginia, Ayer and Jane reminisce about watching reports of the crash on the news and in the papers.

On both sides of the Atlantic at the time there was a public feeling of great unease that a drunk mechanic had been able to steal a military plane and fly it for over 90 minutes through British airspace. Incredibly, 11 years previously, another US mechanic had taken off in a B45 bomber from Alconbury base in Huntingdon, and had crashed his aircraft onto the London to Edinburgh train line.

n the May 1969 Hansard entry, the MP for Bury St Edmunds reminded the Commons of the 1958 theft and warned that as Meyer had skirted dangerously close to Heathrow, the British government must be provided with a transcript of the USAF inquiry hearings into the incident. The minister for defence retorted that it wasn't necessary.

The press was given few further details of the crash and the story was shut down. But over the past 49 years, fantastic rumours and wild conspiracy theories have sprung up in forums and internet chat rooms across the world.
Some say the plane had to be shot down because, as a CIA-operated aircraft, it would have contained secret documents - while others suggest Meyer survived the crash and went into hiding, perhaps somewhere in the Eastern Bloc.

As he prepares his small boat for its first official Channel search mission, Knott tells me he thinks the pervading fog of gossip and hearsay suits the USAF.

"I can't think of anything that prevents the truth from being told at this stage, nearly 50 years on," he says. "I just hope someone will pop up with more information and give the truth - who is it going to hurt now?"

For Jane and Ayer, Knott's Channel search is their last hope of getting what Jane terms as "some closure".

"He was having bad nightmares about Vietnam," she confides as we end our conversation. "We wrote to each other every day and we marked the days off a calendar. You know, he just wanted to come home. All he wanted was to come home."
Simon Caitlin.jpg
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Personally I feel very sorry for Paul Meyer and his family.


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Re: Stolen C-130

#7 Post by Cacophonix » Sat Oct 06, 2018 8:39 am

I am currently reading The Lightning Boys: True Tales from Pilots of the English Electric Lightning (The Jet Age Series) by Richard Pike and one account therein by ex Lightning pilot Rick Groombridge has this to say.
When, at last, we made it back to Wattisham, it was not long before I found myself on QRA (quick reaction alert) duty. As the QRA crew, we were the nation’s front line of air defence while we waited with our fully-armed Lightnings ready to leap into the air at a moment’s notice. Thanks to us, the rest of the country could sleep easy at night. Little be it said, but in truth a stint on QRA duty normally meant a twenty-four-hour period of sheer boredom. So it seemed that time. It was near Christmas, the Russian Tu-95 Bear aircraft were all in the woods, the M-4 Bison aircraft were out to graze, the Tu-16 Badger aircraft were in their setts. Suddenly the operations phone rang. It was the duty controller. “Don’t ask any questions,” he said darkly. “Just do as you’re told.” “Okay,” I said. “Right-oh.” There was a pause. “An American exchange officer is about to visit you.” Another pause. “Okay,” I said. “You are to handover your duties to him then stand down to the officers’ mess.” “Okay,” I said. “Is that it?” “That’s it.” No reason, no explanation, no nothing apart from a click as he put down the phone. An American exchange officer duly turned up, I handed over to him as briefed. He was just as tight-lipped as the controller so without further ado I retired to the officers’ mess to await developments. Soon, I heard a Lightning take off. It was a Saturday, there was no routine flying, so it must have been a QRA aircraft. After less than an hour or so I heard the aircraft return and not too long after that the controller rang me in the mess. “You can resume your QRA duties now,” he said. “Okay,” I said. It was some time later when I heard on the BBC news a story about a USAF top-sergeant from the airbase at Mildenhall. This man’s Christmas leave had been cancelled. On the pretext of a taxi test on a C130 Hercules troop-carrier aircraft, which he was qualified to do, he had got airborne and headed for the States, which he was not qualified to do. The Hercules had crashed into the sea off the UK. Everyone was totally zip-lipped, nonetheless rumours abounded. Word leaked out that the Lightning that had taken off shortly after I handed over QRA duty eventually returned to Wattisham with only one missile. After landing, the Lightning had taxied to the airfield missile site before returning to the QRA hangar with the normal two missiles. I wondered about this. I have wondered ever since. If the speculation was true, and if for no other good reason, at least it would have shown that, for once, one of the bloody missiles had actually worked. Heyho. Anyone for tennis?
:-?

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Re: Stolen C-130

#8 Post by Mrs Ex-Ascot » Sun Dec 30, 2018 4:58 pm

Looks like the wreckage of the C130 has been found and the mystery surrounding the circumstances of the cause of the crash hopefully will be solved next spring

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Re: Stolen C-130

#9 Post by FD2 » Sun Dec 30, 2018 6:54 pm

The link didn't appear Mrs Ex-Ascot - I think this is the one: https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-46624382

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Re: Stolen C-130

#10 Post by Mrs Ex-Ascot » Mon Dec 31, 2018 4:42 am

FD2 wrote:
Sun Dec 30, 2018 6:54 pm
The link didn't appear Mrs Ex-Ascot - I think this is the one: https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-46624382
Thankyou FD2, don't know why my link didn't work, gremlins perhaps? :)
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Re: Stolen C-130

#11 Post by FD2 » Mon Dec 31, 2018 4:47 am

I tried a direct copy and paste with the same result. 'Insert URL' with the ball and chain symbol worked. BBC gremlins!

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Re: Stolen C-130

#12 Post by fin » Mon Jan 14, 2019 8:43 pm

Shout out thanks to Caco for bringing this book to my attention. I am half way through the first volume.

{Although I am almost certain I have the lowest EEL time of anyone on this forum, I do console myself with the belief that I probably have MORE EEL time than 99.9% of the rest of the world, and certainly amongst my pilot friends and acquaintances.}
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Re: Stolen C-130

#13 Post by Alisoncc » Tue Jan 15, 2019 8:59 pm

fin wrote:
Mon Jan 14, 2019 8:43 pm
{Although I am almost certain I have the lowest EEL time of anyone on this forum,
Does EEL time include re-assembling them at 60MU RAF Leconfield? Did a good year doing that. After Vulcans, 'orrible little aeroplane.
Rev Mother Bene Gesserit.

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Re: Stolen C-130

#14 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Jan 08, 2022 5:40 am

Woody's thread came to mind again when I watched this...

Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

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