23 May 1969

Paul Meyer was an aircraft mechanic of the United States Air Force, stationed abroad at RAF Mildenhall. A veteran of the conflict in Vietnam, Meyer was unhappy, homesick, and missing his wife and stepchildren. He was also a heavy drinker. Hoping to be closer to his family, he requested to be transferred to Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia, but was denied.

On the night of 22 May, after attending a house party, he had drank quite heavily and was behaving erratically and aggressively. Despite his friends pleas to sleep it off, he escaped the house party through a window. Local police later picked him up on the A11 and escorted back to his barracks, where he was told to sleep it off. He again disobeyed, and instead made his way to a hangar where a C-130E aircraft was held. Assuming the moniker of "Captain Epstein", he directed that it be prepared for takeoff. As he had worked on this very plane, he had a knowledge of its procedures and how to fly it. The stolen plane took off at 05:08 hours, with Meyer charting a course for Langley.

During the flight, Meyer was able to make an hour-long call to his wife through the plane's radio. However, at 06:55 radar contact with the plane was lost as the C-130 crashed into the English Channel. Debris was recovered on the Channel Island of Alderney. A cursory search by two aircraft failed to locate anything of significance, and Meyer was assumed lost in the cold waters of the English Channel.

Reaction to the incident was mixed. The United States did not immediately make a comment, while the UK's only reaction was to question the security of air bases in Britain. This incident does raise worrying questions about the state of security at these facilities, and the possibility that a foreign actor could just as easily commandeer an aircraft of the United States Air Force.