Cannon crash victims in prime of their lives

First Lt. Frederick "Drew" Dellecker was an accomplished trumpet player and surfer who loved the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Capt. Kenneth Dalga was a new dad.

Capt. Andrew Becker was an Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University graduate who majored in applied meteorology.

All three were in the prime of their lives when they died Tuesday night.

Cannon Air Force Base officials on Thursday identified the three airmen killed when their U-28 aircraft crashed during a training exercise near Clovis Municipal Airport.

Becker, 33, was a pilot for the 318th Special Operations Squadron, according to a Cannon news release. He was from Novi, Michigan, and is survived by his spouse, mother, and father.

Dalga, 29, was a combat systems officer for the 318th Special Operations Squadron. He was from Goldsboro, North Carolina, and is survived by his mother, his spouse and their infant son.

Dellecker, 26, was a co-pilot for the 318th Special Operations Squadron. He was from Daytona Beach, Florida, and is survived by his mother and father.

Dellecker was focused, determined and ultimately successful in almost everything he tried, said Zach Sutton, his friend since elementary school.

"Just anything he set his mind to - it wouldn't matter if it seemed impossible - he would spend as long as it took to get it mastered," said Sutton in a telephone interview Thursday from his home in Maryville, Tennessee.

Sutton said Dellecker was an all-state trumpet player in high school and a serious surfer who traveled to Nicaragua and Costa Rica for that reason on summer vacations.

But Dellecker's primary passion for as long as Sutton could remember was to be accepted to the Air Force Academy.

"In high school, he was the type of kid who would skip parties and he would spend hours and hours and hours on his homework and his school work," Sutton said. "He just really wanted to get in the Academy."

Cannon officials said they had not confirmed who was flying the plane on Tuesday since the pilot and co-pilot alternate being at the controls.

The crash occurred approximately one quarter-mile east of Clovis Municipal Airport about 6:50 p.m. Tuesday. The remains were transported to Albuquerque for autopsy, officials said.

Cannon officials said the cause of the crash remains under investigation.

Clovis pilot Robert Thorn was at the Clovis airport and witnessed the crash.

"What they were doing was kind of a 360 spiral down to a landing, which I've seen them do hundreds and hundreds of times out there because they practice it all the time," Thorn said.

“At one point, the wings actually went beyond a 90-degree angle, where the plane was almost inverted for a second, but then they got the wings leveled back out.”

“At that point,” Thorn said, the engine went to full power and “I thought they might be able pull out.”

But he said they did not have enough altitude to recover.

Thorn said he and others ran to the crash site and immediately, "realized they couldn't have survived."

Managing editors Kevin Wilson, Alisa Boswell and staff from The Daytona Beach News-Journal contributed to this report.