MARTIN’S A SUPERSONIC HOLLYWOOD FLIER

Hollywood has had its share of fliers who act for a living, from Wallace Beery to John Travolta. A few flew in combat, notably the late Wayne Morris, a Navy fighter ace in World War II, and Jimmy Stewart, a B-24 bomber pilot.

But Dean Paul Martin is the only known actor-pilot now on the roster who can go supersonic. Indeed, he talks almost casually of doing nearly 1,200 miles an hour a few years ago during mock aerial combat near Homestead Air Force Base in Florida.

He didn’t really intend to move that briskly, he readily admits. In fact, he eased off after considering that his steed, a Phantom jet, had seen perhaps 20 years of service.

As he recalls it, he was showing an attacking pilot his evade when “I felt a little rumble, something a little peculiar, and looked at the Machmeter. It was just starting to come up to 1.8. I just pulled the throttle right back, said, ‘Whoa.’

“These are old jets, and if you lose a wing, if it folds or something, you’re a sack of vegetables.”

It seems odd that he talks of such things. His dossier includes constant identification as Dean Martin’s son, a past as a rock singer and a tennis pro and a present as an actor co-starring in NBC’s new “Misfits of Science” series.

Not your basic fighter pilot’s background. Unless you consider that Martin has been a rated pilot since age 16, first in helicopters, then twin-engine airplanes. It was this urge to be one of the eagles that eventually led him to become Lt. Dean Paul Martin of the California Air National Guard.

Now a captain, he flies F4-C Phantom jets out of March Air Force Base in Riverside, home base of his unit, the 163rd Tactical Fighter Group.

Martin has the look of a young fighter pilot, with blond hair, the beginnings of crow’s feet around the eyes, straight teeth and a crooked smile. However, that he is of the Right Stuff fraternity, albeit part-time, is something of a feat.

You see, slots for fighter pilots in the Air National Guard are few and far between. And they tend to be reserved for those with fighter experience, usually ex-Air Force regulars who want to keep their hand in while earning a living at civilian pursuits.

Nonetheless, Martin, while watching an air show at Edwards Air Force Base in 1978, found himself seriously wishing he were up there flying the jet fighters. It was a big wish. Not only had he always been a civilian, he was a bit long in the tooth to put in for fighters. He was almost 26 then, and 26, he said, was the cut-off age.

He asked a family friend, an Air Force general, for advice. The general suggested the Air National Guard. A long shot, but the way Martin saw it, nothing ventured, no wings gained.

He flew to Washington to personally plead his case to Maj. Gen. John B. Conaway, director of the Air National Guard. He was fully aware that he could well be considered the latest Hollywood entry in the California Flake Derby.

“I felt I had to get across how sincere I was about this,” he says. “I told him, ‘If you give me a shot and I make it through, I’d be willing to help out with recruiting, promoting the Guard.’ I said that as an entertainer, I think that any success I have only can reflect in a positive way on the Guard.”

The general proved a believer. “He was a wonderful guy, very open-minded,” Martin says. “It was only because of him that I got the chance.”

There were a few loose ends to tie up in Hollywood before Officer Candidate School in Knoxville, Tenn. Such as a one-year development deal Martin says he had signed with ABC: “I had to go there and say, ‘Uh, I’ll be right back.’

“My agent hyperventilated. They all thought I was out of my mind. But it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I’d regret it if I didn’t take it. There was no way to explain that to anyone, so I stopped explaining and just went and did it.”

After OCS, he went on to learn the mysteries of a primary jet trainer, the T-37, then the advanced trainer, the T-38. He pressed on to the Phantom, with survival school and a constant fear of assignment to C-130 transports in between. It added up to 18 months of training. The last eight months, he said, were in the front cockpit of the twin-seat Phantom, qualifying as the pilot in charge and learning such arts as air-to-air and air-to-ground combat and how to avoid a SAM missile.

Then came the bad times. Because of an oversupply of freshly minted Phantom pilots, he says, he had to spend the early part of his Guard career in the fighter-bomber as what is known as the “GIB,” the guy in back.

Although also a pilot, the GIB largely spends his time running the plane’s radar, electronics and weapons systems and serving as an extra set of eyes. Martin was disappointed. He wanted to drive the thing.

However, now that he’s been a front-seater for nearly a year, he says his back-seat experience has made him a better pilot and . . . well, a more considerate one, too.

More considerate, that is, to the guy in back. This, Martin says, is because he truly appreciates how the rear-seater can become prone to high anxiety, particularly at low levels, simply because (a) his cockpit visibility is limited and (b) he isn’t flying the plane.

It’s no sweat for the guy up front, he says: “You go tearing across the desert at 500 knots, you’re fine, you can see, and you’re pretty comfortable down at 200 feet.

“But this poor guy in back . . . .” Martin shook his head in sympathy.

To be comfortable at 500 knots at 200 feet requires a certain amount of practice if one is not to become a smoking hole in the ground. Therefore, Air Guard pilots, as do those in the regular Air Force, must fly in a minimum number of practice missions to stay proficient.

“The Guard fighter pilot has to basically fill the same square as the active-duty fighter pilot, only we can do it on our own time,” Martin says (a Pentagon spokeswoman says Guard pilots must fly a minimum of 30 sorties within a given six-month period).

“We have continuous ongoing deployments,” he adds, citing as an example five-day stint of flying in Arizona earlier this summer, where he volunteered to work with forward air controllers who spot ground targets for fighter-bombers.

Other than a mandatory one-weekend-a-month drill for all hands, there is no set schedule for Guard pilots, he explains, so it’s up to them to “work their schedules so they can get out once, twice a week, at least, to keep current.

“It’s a very flexible deal, but it’s a nightmare to be a scheduler.”

Even though he started work on “Misfits” last month, he’ll still continue flying, probably on weekends, he says. The series, which has a 13-week commitment from NBC, will premiere in the fall.

He grins when asked if he and others in his unit get the usual weekend-warrior razzing from Air Force regulars. “Oh, yeah. They give us tremendous grief. But we give it right back. All in all, I think they enjoy us. The common denominator is: We enjoy flying.”

Always lurking in the back of each pilot’s mind is that he’s training for war. In the case of Martin’s unit, the basic mission is air-to-ground combat, bombing and strafing enemy troops, equipment and facilities, with jousting against enemy aircraft the secondary order of business.

What happens if the worst happens while he’s plying his actor’s career--the threat of war triggers the call of his squadron to active duty?

It could be said that Martin’s reply indicates that he’s thinking positively, expecting peace to continue even in these troubled times.

“I think,” he says, “that I’d have to sit down with all parties concerned, and if there were a way I could finish up my obligation to the studio and meet up with the guys later, I would do that.

“Whatever I would do, I’m a member of the squadron, I’m a mission-ready fighter pilot, and I would make every effort to be there.”