Martin Probably Did Not Hear Warning, Guard Officer States
Capt. Dean Paul Martin and his weapons officer, killed in the crash of their jet fighter last month, probably never heard a command from air traffic controllers to turn away from a mountain peak, his commander said Saturday.
Lt. Col. Arthur D. Cornelius, commander of the California Air National Guard’s 163rd Tactical Fighter Group, said the pilot of one of the two jets that accompanied Martin, son of entertainer Dean Martin, on the training mission March 21 reported that he did not hear a command from controllers to turn away from the 11,500-foot peak of Mount San Gorgonio.
“We could assume that No. 2 (Martin) never heard (the instruction from controllers),” Cornelius said. “No. 3 (plane) watched (Martin) go back into the clouds and said, ‘No way I’m going to do that.’ ”
Cornelius said Martin may have failed to hear the command from controllers at Ontario Air Traffic Control Center because of radio “frequency overloading.”
Cornelius did not provide further details, but said an investigation into the crash by Air Force experts would be complete by the end of next week.
The exact cause of the accident may never be known, but “we will probably have an idea (of what happened) and we will learn from this,” he said.
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