dean martin's son dino, what caused his 1980's a-7 crash?

[tom d. friedman]

rat packer / singer / movie star dean martin's son dino, a california ang a- 7 corsair pilot, lost his life in a fatal crash of the type in the late 1980's. the tragedy devastated his father, & his dad passed away with in the next year or so. what were the circumstances of that accident?? i recall the media saying dino martin was quite experienced with respectable flight time in the type.

[RickH]

He was a former O2 driver and he was one of the unit pilots who transitioned with the CaANG Squadron to F-4s. They ran into a mountain in bad weather, the way i heard it.

[gunnyperdue]

rat packer / singer / movie star dean martin's son dino, a california ang a- 7 corsair pilot, lost his life in a fatal crash of the type in the late 1980's. the tragedy devastated his father, & his dad passed away with in the next year or so. what were the circumstances of that accident?? i recall the media saying dino martin was quite experienced with respectable flight time in the type.

I'm pretty sure it was an F-4 (I led a flight of six there to turn over to the ANG unit and I remember the accident happening shortly thereafter)... if you've ever been to March AFB... you'd notice a fair sized hill just off the runway a bit to the northwest (IIRC).... Dino's son was being vectored by Approach Control.... he was below MSA and ran into the mountain everyone knew was there... can't remember if it was in the weather or the visibility was bad.... you could be "VFR" and have less than 2 miles viz in the crud they called air back then.... who was at fault... tough to say.

gunny

[Jack Cook]

F-4 and WX

[Steve Nelson]

According to Wiki, the crash occured in '87, and Dean passed away in '95.

SN

[Jack Cook]

you're confusing father & son

[Steve Nelson]

No..just clarifying that the son was killed in 87, and the father didn't die until eight years later (not within the next year as mentioned in the original post.) Unfortunately, the Wiki article doesn't say what type of aircraft was involved, just a "jet fighter" (which of course to the layman is any single-engine military aircraft.)

SN

[Jack Cook]

F-4C into a snow storm

[snj5]

I'm also pretty sure it was an F-4 that went into the mountain during very poor wx. I remember hearing that he was well regarded within his sqn.

[TOSG]

The "Fair size hill" in question is the Mt. San Jacinto wilderness, with several peaks over 10,000 ft (Mt. San Jacinto itself is the peak that the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway ascends). He was in an F-4 variant and impacted one of the high peaks, it took quite some time to locate the wreckage. I would suggest searching the Riverside, CA Press-Enterprise archives for more information, they provided extensive coverage at the time of the accident.

[hang the expense]

I remember the crash and it was an F-4.Very sad day and it wrecked his Dad as it would any father.