Martin Apparently Didn’t Hear Controller’s Order

An air traffic controller frantically tried to guide Dean Paul Martin through a blizzard, but a welter of heavy air traffic hampered communications, according to an Air Force investigation of the fatal crash last March 21.

Martin apparently never heard the controller’s order to change course, according to a transcript of communications between the California Air National Guard pilot and a Federal Aviation Administration controller at Ontario International Airport obtained by the Press-Enterprise of Riverside.

The actor-pilot’s last words before slamming into a mountainside were a request for a course change the controller had transmitted already.

“Can you get Seven Two higher immediately?” Martin radioed, referring to the designation of his own plane, Grizzly 72. The controller immediately repeated his order to turn left.

But there is no way of telling if Martin ever heard the instructions.

Instead, investigators found that the 35-year-old son of entertainer Dean Martin fired the afterburners of his F-4C Phantom, delivering an instantaneous burst of speed, and plunged into a dive. The fighter’s weapons officer, 39-year-old Capt. Ramon Ortiz of Las Vegas, also died instantly in the crash.

In the 15 minutes before the crash of Martin’s plane, FAA controllers in Ontario and Los Angeles were directing eight commercial flights and six military aircraft, including Martin’s three-fighter squadron.

Martin was an avid pilot and joined the California Air National Guard in 1980.

He set out the afternoon of March 21 with two other jets on a practice bombing run.

The wreckage of his plane was found five days later in a remote canyon in the San Bernardino Mountains.