In this 75th year of Mission Aviation Fellowship’s operations in Papua New Guinea, we talked to Max Meyers, whose MAF service spanned almost four decades, and went from flying aeroplanes in PNG to leading the whole organisation in Australia and the USA.
Story by Matt Painter
At only eighteen years of age, Max Meyers was a determined young man from Sydney with his sights set firmly on MAF.
“I had all the requirements for a commercial pilot's licence, everything was done,” he says. “But MAF doesn’t want an 18-year-old kid, and the Air Force would accept me on a six-year appointment. I thought it would certainly help me professionally in terms of my ability to fly.”
After much prayer and weighing of options, Max joined the Royal Australian Air Force and went straight on to a flying training school. Max excelled on his course and was selected for operational fighter training.
“I flew my first jet when I was just 20,” he says. “I loved the Air Force, and it was good for me. My friends were the roughest, toughest, crudest, booziest sort of guys, but they were terrific!”
Max flew many aircraft types in the Air Force, beginning with the Tiger Moth and Wirraway. He also flew the Canberra, DC-3, Bristol Freighter and even the Vickers Valiant – one of the classic V-force bombers of the 1950s.
“I did an endorsement on the Valiant, but only as a copilot. That big four-engine thing – it was exhilarating.”
On fighters, Max flew the de Havilland Vampire and then joined 75 Squadron flying the Gloster Meteor Mk 8.
One day Max learned he was about to be sent to Malaya (present day Malaysia) to carry out anti-communist operations flying the CAC Sabre.
“I loved what I was doing,” Max says. “But I just couldn't handle the fact that here I was, being called to go into where they would rocket and bomb villages. I couldn’t do it. I went to my Commanding Officer and told him.”
Despite an initially understanding response, the Air Force wasn’t particularly impressed.
“So, they gave me the worst job they could possibly give me,” Max says. He ended up being the adjutant of the South Australian Air Training Corps – a desk job. Max tried to resign his commission, but they wouldn’t accept it.
“I was so important to the defence of Australia that they wouldn’t let me go,” Max laughs.
“The first night I was in South Australia, I met Jo, my wife. And so, I remember thinking, ‘Well, all is not lost.’”
Max spent seven years in the Air Force, then in 1961 he and Jo set off for the Territory of New Guinea with MAF.
That’s how I got involved in leadership. I never asked for it.
“I’d never flown a Cessna. I’d not flown any light aeroplane for years!” Max says. “I found myself in Wewak. We had to do five flights over every route before we could be checked out.”
“At the end of ‘62 we were posted to Wasua down on the Fly River, far away from Wewak. That was a wonderful place. During that time, we learned a lot about culture and language. Jo was heavily involved in music with the girls and women there. She and I both would say that was the most fruitful and happiest time of our MAF service in Papua New Guinea, being down there in the bush.
“It was hard work. I did 900 hours every year. I flew the Cessna 180, 185, 206, then the best aeroplane of the whole lot was a Cessna 180 seaplane. It was just absolutely amazing flying. I was convinced that I would be flying in Papua New Guinea until I retired.”
In the mid-sixties, based at Wapenamanda, Max was identified as a potential successor to the Chief Pilot. This heralded an unexpected change in ‘flight plan’ that would see Max eventually serve as the leader of MAF in Australia and then the President of MAF in the US until he finally left the organisation in 1998.
“So that’s how I got involved in leadership. I never asked for it. I never thought that I would finish flying at 38 years of age. I thought I’d be more like 58 or 68 or something.
“My whole role changed. I never went back to field flying unless they were short up there, and I would go and fly for 3 or 4 weeks.”
Max once had the opportunity to ferry a Piper Aztec destined for West Timor all the way across the Pacific Ocean.
“It was 15 hours from Oakland to Honolulu, 16.5 hours from Honolulu to Pago Pago, 12 hours to Auckland and 10 hours to Melbourne. That was one heck of a long way. We had no GPS. We had HF radio, we had ADF or Radio Compass, and on that we’d lose contact 100 miles out, and then wouldn't pick it up for another ten hours.
“I haven’t had a great deal of flying,” Max says, looking back. “I think my total logbook wouldn’t be any more than 13,000 hours. But I’ve flown 50 different types of aeroplanes. I didn’t have a clue I would be doing the sort of thing I ended up doing. Other people did. And they fed me stuff and I had to learn. And a lot of people suffered in my learning, I tell you! But I just had to trust God for that.”
In what is now PNG, Max and Jo were heavily involved in serving missions, the emerging church and a new nation.
“God was bringing us into an arena that was going to explode in terms of change,” he reflects. “You look at what PNG is like today and what it was like in 1961, and it’s just amazing what has happened. And we were there inserted all over the country in so many places. We had twenty-something aeroplanes working there. And it was very good coverage.”
