Terrain and Circumstances Complicate Search for Jet

By LOUIS SAHAGUN

April 9, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

DENVER —

The one thing Air Force officials know for sure is that an A-10 attack bomber carrying four 500-pound bombs suddenly left a three-plane formation over southern Arizona’s Superstition Mountains about noon last Wednesday.

As for how and why the plane veered northeast and then possibly crashed 1 hour and 40 minutes later--and 775 miles off course--in the Holy Cross Wilderness area just south of Vail, Colo., they haven’t a clue.

Nonetheless, on Tuesday, they were busy denying reports that the plane might have been sabotaged, or even crashed during a botched attempt to steal the $9-million, twin-engine bomber, its bombs and 575 rounds of armor-piercing, 30-millimeter cannon ammunition.

“Until we actually find the pilot or the plane, none of that can be substantiated,” said Air Force Lt. Brad Scott. “At this point we have no physical evidence to support any of the theories out there being discussed.”

For now, all the Air Force will say is that the search for 33-year-old pilot Craig Button and his Warthog bomber has narrowed to the rugged terrain and shifting snows of 12,467-foot New York Mountain.

That is where analyses of radar imagery and eyewitness reports last placed the aircraft, said Keith Shepherd, a spokesman for Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, where Button’s flight originated.

The Pentagon is investigating Button’s military career, authorities said. He entered active duty in April 1991 and served as a T-37 flight instructor at Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio, Texas. He had been training at Davis-Monthan since February to fly the A-10 Thunderbolt II attack jet.

But Shepherd discounted suggestions that Button, who was en route to the nearby Barry M. Goldwater bombing range, may have somehow been incapacitated when he made a beeline for the Rocky Mountains.

“Initially, some thought that maybe he had a heart attack and set the plane on automatic pilot by pushing a little button on the control stick,” Shepherd said. “However, radar tracks indicate the pilot was in control of the plane, turning and maneuvering.”

So what happened?

“We are not in a position to speculate on that,” Shepherd said. “The first thing we want to do is find the pilot, then find the plane. Then we can conduct a detailed investigation.”

Button’s Warthog was fully fueled and headed for the bombing range with the general purpose bombs and ammunition when it vanished at 11:58 a.m., authorities said.

A minute earlier, the instructor pilot in the formation had ordered that Button and a second pilot fall directly behind his plane. But only one of the trailing student pilots reported that the maneuver had been completed.

“The instructor flew around the formation and realized that the third A-10 was missing,” Shepherd said. “That’s when the search began.”

Over the past week, a U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance plane, two National Guard helicopters, a C-130 cargo plane and several single-engine Colorado Civil Air Patrol planes have surveyed the 9,000-square-mile region traversed by the missing plane.

Although the area of the search was recently narrowed, fierce winds and heavy snowfall have made it all but impossible to dispatch ground rescue teams.

“These aren’t ideal conditions for an air search--and conditions are expected to deteriorate,” said Eagle County sheriff’s Capt. Ken Wilson.

“Ground personnel would be useless right now,” he added. “Weather dictates what we do up here in the mountains and right now, we sit and wait.”

The search also has been bedeviled by what Shepherd described as “a lot of strange coincidences.”

For example, figuring that the plane’s ordnance might have exploded in a crash, Air Force officials checked seismographic sensors installed across the southern Arizona desert for disturbances.

Mysterious thunderous explosions actually were reported in the Tucson area on the day the A-10 disappeared, authorities said.

Trouble is, “at the same time the plane was reported missing, there was a 4.0 earthquake along the San Andreas fault, which set off all the sensors in the flight path of our plane,” Shepherd said.

Simultaneously, a NASA-operated SR-71 flying east along the southern Arizona border triggered numerous sonic booms that were magnified by cloudy weather.

What is more, authorities said Button had been ordered to switch off his plane’s transponder while flying in delta formation to help reduce confusion by radar tracking the three aircraft. That complicates the search process since no emergency signal can be transmitted from the downed plane’s location.

“The earthquake, the SR-71, the calls from people reporting explosions, the transponder being turned off, the missing plane--it’s unusual that all this stuff happened at the same time,” said Air Force Lt. Thomas Hoskins. “It’s created confusion.”

Ultimately, visual sightings of a low-flying military plane reported to an Air Force hot line, coupled with Western Air Defense and Denver International Airport radar logs that showed the plane tracking to the northeast, helped authorities focus their search in the Rocky Mountains west of Denver.

To help narrow the search even further, Air Force officials are soliciting calls from anyone who saw an A-10 aircraft or a parachute or heard an explosion in the early afternoon last Wednesday.

“We’ve received hundreds of telephone calls on our hot line,” Shepherd said. “We’re hoping to find the pilot alive.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Missing Plane

The search for an Air-Force attack jet that veered off course last week is focusing on New York Mountain, where the plane went off radar.

A-10 Thunderbolt

Wing span: 57 ft., 6 in.

Length overall: 53 ft., 4 in.

Height overall: 14 ft., 8 in.

Weight (basic design)*: 30,044 lbs.

Max. combat speed: 449 mph

* This model included four 500-lb. bombs

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