Word: airings
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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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...
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...
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...
...days later, on May 20, after more than 20,000 artillery rounds and 155 air strikes had virtually denuded the top of 937, the assault force finally took the hill. The U.S. command claimed that 622 North Vietnamese had been killed, though only 182 weapons were found, indicating that the dead might actually be considerably fewer. Specialist Speers, who had begun the battle as a squad leader, came down as a platoon commander-such were the U.S. casualties...
...pull back and were quiet, they'd kill us in the night." Zais said that he had received no orders to keep casualties* down. Could he not have ordered B-52 strikes against the hill, rather than committing his paratroopers? The general said "absolutely not"-air power could not possibly have done...