Match of DNA Confirms A-10 Pilot’s Identity

The Air Force has solved part of the mysterious disappearance of Capt. Craig Button, determining through a DNA match that he was in his A-10 Thunderbolt that crashed into a snowy Colorado mountainside.

But military officials said Monday that the force with which Button’s warplane crashed may have obliterated clues as to why the 32-year-old pilot veered off from a routine training mission in southwestern Arizona.

Button broke off from the mission on April 2. The Air Force tracked the $9-million plane’s northeasterly path into Colorado, where it was found.

Unlike commercial planes, the A-10 was not equipped with a flight-data recorder, which provides information about the plane and the pilot. That means there is no record of why Button made the initial turn over southwestern Arizona, said Lt. Keith Shepherd, spokesman at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson.

Button’s parents learned Sunday that their son was killed in the crash. The military used DNA records and tissue specimens from the wreckage to positively identify the remains as Button’s.

“We are pretty much up on it all. We don’t want to say anything at this time. Please understand,” Richard Button said Monday in a phone interview from his home in Massapequa, N.Y.