MAF trustee and former pilot Max Gove joined MAF 54 years ago (credit: LuAnne Cadd)
54 years ago, Max Gove joined MAF as a young pilot in Ethiopia. Today, the father of four is on the charity’s board, which oversees the direction of MAF. In MAF’s new special 80th anniversary edition of the Flying for Life podcast, Max takes a trip down memory lane and shares his most memorable milestones…
In episode 11 of the Flying for Life podcast ‘Happy 80th Birthday MAF’, Max turns back the clock to unpack how MAF was born out of the ashes of World War II. As he reflects on 80 incredible years, Max shares his own adventures through the ages.
Even as a boy, Max loved planes and always wanted to be a missionary (credit: Max Gove)
At the age of seven, Max – who loved planes – knew that God wanted him to be a missionary.
The defining moment came a year later in 1956 when Max and his parents were listening to a BBC radio news report one Sunday evening in their front room.
On 8 January 1956, five missionaries (a pilot and his four passengers) were speared to death in Ecuador. Max – who was eight at the time – takes up the story:
‘It was quite significant because I was interested in mission, and five missionaries had gone missing in the jungle trying to reach a new tribe who had never been reached before. We had been following the story and finally heard a few days later that all five had been killed by these Waorani Indians.
‘When I was 14, a missionary came to stay with us for the weekend and he left behind a book called ‘Jungle Pilot’. When I started reading it, I realised it was about the MAF pilot Nate Saint who had been killed, which I’d heard about on the BBC. God really spoke to me through this book and I thought, “Yes, I need to be a missionary pilot!” That’s where it all started.’
Max Gove, MAF trustee and former pilot in Ethiopia & Kenya
Funding the flight training
Not long after reading the book, Max fondly recalls how he got to know the late Stuart King – one of MAF’s co-founders:
‘I visited MAF UK from the age of 14. Every year, I would go up until I started my flight training. They advised me on what I should study at school, etc. I was talking to the director Steve Stevens and in came Stuart King who was visiting from Africa, so I had the chance to meet him. He was just a very gracious, kind man, which stuck with me over the years. He was a godly man without question who was good to everyone.’
At 18, Max learnt to fly at Cranfield Airport in Bedford (credit: Max Gove)
Learning to fly has always been an expensive endeavour, but MAF – and Max’s wife Susan – supported him every step of the way explains Max:
‘The biggest burden for me was how do I get the money to learn how to fly? In those days it was the equivalent of the cost of a house. My father was a pastor, so didn’t have the money to lend me.
‘I left school at 16, started working in a garage and wondered if I’d ever get the money together, but when I was 18, MAF wrote to me asking if I would be interested in borrowing money to learn how to fly and then pay it back. I said: “Yes, please!” so in 1966, I headed off to Bedford to learn how to fly at Cranfield Airport.
‘I worked as a flight instructor for nearly five years to help repay the money. Whilst in Bedford, I met a young lady – Susan who is now my wife – and it was her salary that actually paid off the debt. So, if you’re interested in flying, find a spouse who can help you pay for it!’
After the couple had paid off the debt, they went to Bible college before joining MAF in 1971.
Max, Susan & daughters Esther (L) & Naomi (R) (credit: Seppo Kurkola / Max Gove)
They moved to Ethiopia with their daughter Naomi in 1972 where Max first served as a MAF pilot in Ethiopia for five years. He then flew in Kenya for seven years.
Just a map, compass, watch and radio
Without the Global Positioning System (GPS) and the advanced aviation technology of today, Max – like his predecessors – only had basic maps, a compass and a watch to navigate:
‘They were absolutely vital because you could time how far you were flying in a particular direction, and then you could plot that on the map. That’s what Stuart and Jack did during their survey across Africa and that’s what I did when I was flying in Africa.
‘We didn’t have GPS; we had maps that weren’t very good! When I was flying in Ethiopia, there were large areas of the map that were white with unreliable information like, “Relief data believed not to exceed 3,500 feet!” so I had to learn my way around by recognising things. So, it was my eyeballs and the map, which I could draw lines on, depending on the heading and the time. My biggest navigation tool really was my watch.’
Max refuels plane in Ethiopia (credit: Max Gove)
Susan saved the day on another occasion:
‘I got myself into a bit of a pickle. Pilots are never lost, just temporarily unaware of their position! It was my first stint in Ethiopia at the end of the rainy season – I was flying through valleys and calling back heading directions to my wife, who was following on the radio.
‘Suddenly I came into an area that was completely clear of cloud and I couldn’t recognise anything, so I had to call back to my wife and ask her to repeat all of the direction changes, headings and times, which I then had to plot on the map to find out where I was! GPS would have made a huge difference!’
Max served as a MAF pilot for 12 years in Ethiopia and in Kenya (credit: Max Gove)
Early breakfast at home in Nairobi, Kenya before heading out for work (credit: Max Gove)
A close shave
Max remembers the time when he and his eight-year-old daughter Sara had a technical hitch over the Central African Republic (CAR) jungle when he was tasked with ferrying a MAF plane from Kenya to Chad:
‘Just before we reach our first stop in Nyankunde, DRC, the radio stops working. So when we land at MAF’s base there, the engineer explains that a plug has come off the back of the radio under the panel on the passenger side. He literally has to crawl under the panels to push the plug back in.
‘After taking off from there, I notice that the oil pressure is dropping. As we fly over the jungle, it looks like broccoli from the air, and if we go down, we’d never be seen again, even if the plane burst into flames! So, there I am watching this oil pressure gauge going down figuring that I’m not going to get to my destination tonight, so I make a diversion, but find that the aircraft engine is using a lot of oil. Fortunately, I have oil with me and I’m able to put that in.
‘The next day we set off again and fly to CAR and then we only have enough remaining fuel to fly from CAR to Chad. Five minutes after take-off, the radio stops working again, which is quite important because if we have a problem, we can’t tell anyone. The radio plug had dropped off again!
‘I tell Sara to squat on the seat and hang on to the controls while I try to get under the panel and get that plug back on again. After two or three goes, I couldn’t do it. By that time, Sara was in tears and suggested that we pray about it, so we did. I tried again while she was flying the plane and finally managed to get the plug back on again and everything carried on as normal!’
Sara (centre) & Ruth (front) with dad Max, along with their dog Taffy (credit: Max Gove)
A memorable medevac
During his 12 years of flying in Ethiopia and Kenya, Max carried out countless medical evacuations (medevacs), which saved the lives of isolated patients living nowhere near any health facilities. One Ethiopian elderly man springs to mind:
‘I get a call from a missionary saying that an old man has been brought into their mission station who’s been bitten by a crocodile two days before.
‘He’d been working in a field and then crossed a knee-deep river to go home. This river runs through Ethiopia’s rainforest. Just as he gets out of the river, this crocodile grabs him by the back of his leg and bites a chunk out of his calf, but the man manages to hold onto a branch and pulls himself away, but he can’t walk.
‘He crawls home. His community have two choices – do they carry him to hospital, which would be a two-week walk, or do they take him to the missionary station, which is a couple of days away?
‘They carry him to the missionary’s house who called me, so I’m able to divert my flight and pick up the old man. The missionary suspects that the leg will be amputated.
‘I fly him to hospital in 20 minutes rather than two weeks by land – if he had gone overland, he never would have made it.
‘I wondered if he would live. About three or four weeks later, the hospital calls me to collect him. When I land at the airstrip near the hospital, I look around the crowd, but there was no one there with one leg. They all had two legs!
‘Eventually, I see the old man with a stick – the doctors had been able to save his leg, so he was able to go home.’
Wrestling with Mursi tribesmen in Ethiopia (credit: Bark Fahnestock / Max Gove)
Expanding MAF around the globe
Max stopped flying in 1989 but carried out various management roles within MAF for over 30 years before retiring in 2015. He became a trustee in 2017.
Max launches MAF in Liberia in 2015, pictured with Emil Kundig (credit: Max Gove)
One of Max’s favourite roles was to help grow MAF around the world by launching operations in Madagascar, Mongolia, Bangladesh, Uganda, Timor Leste, Namibia and Liberia. He also re-opened MAF programmes in Ethiopia and South Sudan when conflict subsided.
MAF also played a pivotal role in growing the Church in Mongolia. Following the fall of Communism in 1990, MAF set up operations in 2001 when there were very few Christians in the country. Today, there are around 80,000, according to Harvester Ministries. Max charts Mongolia’s epic growth in Christianity:
‘I first went to Mongolia to do a survey in 1991, just after the Iron Curtain came down across Europe. The Russians were pulling out of all these different countries and Mongolia decided that it didn’t want to be tied in with Communism anymore. Mongolia opened up to the West and asked us for support.
‘The Church was very small. Someone said you could get all the Christians in Mongolia on the back of a yak – four or five, I think it was. We asked ourselves what we could achieve in Mongolia. The goal was to fly for the Church for at least ten years and see it grow in remote areas, and that’s exactly what we did! We were actually there for 20 years in the end and the Church grew by a huge amount – up to 80,000. It’s not a highly populated country – around 3.5 million people – so that’s significant.’
Max launched MAF in Mongolia (Blue Sky Aviation) in 2001 (credit: Dallas Derksen)
MAF on the frontline for Christ
Max also helped coordinate MAF’s response to various disasters including the Boxing Day Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004, which killed 230,000 people in 15 countries (source: Red Cross).
As MAF’s country director in Bangladesh at the time, Max was able to dispatch MAF’s float plane to Aceh – the worst hit area in Indonesia. This float plane was one of four MAF aircraft on the frontline.
Max dispatched MAF’s floatplane in Bangladesh to Aceh in Indonesia (credit: MAF Archive)
MAF was one of the first responders to carry out survey flights. Every day, MAF delivered medical supplies, food and water to survivors. In total, over 40 tonnes of relief were flown in by MAF.
In the face of destroyed infrastructure and communications, MAF also set up critical comms centres which enabled aid workers to contact their bases.
A bridge in Aceh collapses (credit: MAF Archive)
The floatplane was an essential tool which eased suffering:
‘We flew our amphibious plane down from Bangladesh to Aceh and we were able to loan it out with our pilots for over six weeks. It did a lot of work because many of the runways had been destroyed. The land planes were landing on the roads, but our plane was able to land on the water and bring relief to a lot of to people.’
Earlier this year, Max attended a special reception at Buckingham Palace, which recognised MAF’s incredible work in its 80th year.
Max & MAF’s Sam Baguma chat to Princess Anne at the palace (credit: IJP Event Photos)
Max hopes that the charity’s original vision will continue for many years to come:
‘I pray that we never lose sight of the vision that Stuart King, Jack Hemmings, Murray Kendon, and Betty Greene first conceived, and that we never stop affecting people for Christ. I pray that in 80 years’ time, we’ll still have that same vision and never lose it.
‘I have never ever felt that working for MAF was just a job – it’s been a joy! It’s been a great privilege to do stuff knowing that it’s going to make a difference to God’s Kingdom.’
Max Gove, MAF trustee and former pilot in Ethiopia & Kenya
Max shares his most memorable milestone in episode 11 of the Flying for Life podcast ‘Happy 80th Birthday MAF’. Listen now.
