Wal-Mart Heir Dies in Light Aircraft Crash

The conditions were perfect for flying when John Walton, billionaire beneficiary of the Wal-Mart fortune, decorated Vietnam veteran and philanthropist, climbed into his tiny homemade aircraft.

Minutes later the 11th richest man in the world lay dead amid the wreckage scattered through the sagebrush scrub at the northern end of Jackson Hole airport in the wilds of Wyoming.

The cause of the crash was not known yesterday, but its impact reverberated across America's business community. The Wal-Mart corporate headquarters in Arkansas was in mourning, while the town Jackson Hole, where Walton lived with his family, was united in grief.

According to Forbes magazine, Walton, 58, leaves behind a fortune of $18.2bn (£10bn), his share of the retail store chain set up by his father, Sam Walton, in 1962 that has since grown into the world's biggest company and now owns Asda in the UK.

"We're sad that John Walton, who was well known and much loved in this valley, died doing something that he loved to do, which was fly aircraft," said Joan Anzelmo, a spokeswoman for Grand Teton National Park. "I saw parts of it," she said.

"I didn't realise what I was seeing at first. It was so lightweight it looked like a giant model airplane."

Walton, an experienced pilot, had brought the ultra light plane to Jackson Hole about a month ago. Made out of an aluminium frame with wings wrapped in a fabric similar to heavy duty sail cloth and with a small petrol-powered engine, he had flown it several times without mishap. The cause of the crash is being investigated by park rangers and the highway patrol.

Despite enormous riches, Walton's life did not follow the usual pattern of a scion of a wealthy dynasty. He attended a public - state funded - school where he was a football star, but at the age of 19 he dropped out of college in Ohio after volunteering for service in Vietnam with the Green Berets, the US Army's special forces unit.

"There were a lot of people talking about the war in the dorm rooms, but I didn't think they understood it," he said in one of his rare interviews.

Arriving immediately after the Tet offensive, he served as commando and medic, and was awarded the Silver Star for saving the lives of several members of his unit during a firefight with North Vietnamese soldiers.

After he returned from Vietnam, Walton learned to fly and went to work as a pilot for Wal-Mart, but he left soon to fly crop dusters over the cotton fields of Mississippi, Arizona and Texas.

He also founded a company that built sailing boats, and only joined the board of Wal-Mart in 1992 following the death of his father.

He became, however, the driving force behind the family's philanthropic activities, ploughing millions into a scholarship fund to help low-income students attend private and parochial schools in some of America's poorest areas.

In the Forbes list of the top 20 wealthiest people in the world in March, Walton was tied in 11th place with his brother Jim, one spot behind his brother Rob, and just ahead of his sister Alice, and his mother, Helen.

"He had the greatest smile. You just couldn't help but like John," Marilyn Bogle, whose husband managed Sam Walton's first store in Bentonville, Arkansas, told the Springdale Morning News.

"John was kind of the loner. He didn't like the publicity that went along with the family."