U.S., German Planes Missing Off Africa; Collision Feared

U.S. and German military planes with a total of 33 people on board were reported missing off the coast of southern Africa on Sunday amid indications they may have collided and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.

The South African air force said a signal received from a life jacket emergency beacon was evidence there might be survivors. And a French aircraft helping in the search reported picking up an indistinct voice giving a mayday call from the area.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Air Force’s Air Mobility Command, headquartered at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, said an Air Force C-141 Starlifter cargo plane with nine people on board was on a return flight Saturday afternoon to the British territory of Ascension Island in the South Atlantic from the southwestern African nation of Namibia when it failed to arrive on schedule.

“We are presuming it went down in the Atlantic Ocean,” Sgt. Ellen Schirmer said. “We don’t have confirmation of that right now, but we are assuming that.”

She said officials were investigating any connection with the German plane, which she noted went missing “about the same time and about the same place that we lost contact” with the C-141.

The C-141 was assigned to the 305th Air Mobility wing at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, Schirmer said. The names of the crew members were not released, but Schirmer indicated that at least one was from California.

German Defense Minister Volker Ruehe said the German aircraft was a Tupolev 154 transport with 24 people aboard. It was last heard from Saturday afternoon and apparently had crashed into the Atlantic, he said.

A South African air force spokeswoman said a flash picked up by satellite and reported by officials Saturday night at Johannesburg airport indicated a possible midair collision.

Ruehe said the German plane was built in the former Soviet Union in 1989 and acquired from the former East German military the following year during the unification of East and West Germany. According to Ruehe, it passed its most recent inspection one month ago.

The plane was normally used to transport politicians and enforce arms control accords. It was equipped with infrared sighting gear and cameras, but these were not in use for Saturday’s routine transport flight. Since it was originally an East German plane, the crew consisted of former East Germans. On long flights from Europe to Africa, the German air force reportedly always uses double crews.

*

The crew’s last direct contact with the ground was with controllers in Accra, Ghana, before the plane headed out over the Atlantic. An indirect communication was received when the aircraft was 930 miles off the coast of Angola.

The German plane had been traveling from the Cologne airport to Cape Town, South Africa, where the 12 German marines on board were to have participated in a yacht race marking the 75th anniversary of the South African navy.

In addition to the marines, there were two military spouses and 10 crew members on board.

Ruehe said that four German aircraft, two specially equipped for maritime searches, were being sent to the area of the presumed crash late Sunday to look for wreckage. He said France and South Africa also were sending aircraft and that Britain had been asked to help.

Times staff writer Mary Williams Walsh in Berlin contributed to this report.