The Air Force threw a second U-2 spy plane into the search for its vanished A-10 Thunderbolt attack bomber Wednesday, trying to solve one of the military’s most baffling missing-aircraft mysteries since an entire Navy squadron disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle off Florida in the 1940s.
In addition to an unprecedented array of sophisticated search planes working the Colorado mountains where the aircraft was last seen a week ago, criminal investigators from the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations have entered the case.
The powerful ground support attack aircraft, loaded with machine guns and four 500-pound bombs but carrying no nuclear weapons, vanished April 2 after breaking out of formation during a routine training mission over southern Arizona near its base at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
According to numerous radar and visual sightings, the plane then flew at low level more than 800 miles into the Colorado Rockies west of Denver, where it was last seen altering course near Vail.
“We believe several of these reported sightings are highly credible,” said Col. Barry Barksdale, commander of Davis-Monthan’s 355th Wing, to which the A-10 belonged.
Estimates are that the aircraft might have run out of fuel around Edwards, Colo., near New York Mountain, though the Air Force is uncertain of its final course.
The pilot, Capt. Craig Button, reportedly has a brother living in Denver and previously made cross-country flights over the Colorado mountain country from Davis-Monthan.
Pentagon officials said they had no evidence of theft or sabotage in the plane’s disappearance.
“I don’t think anybody at this point has a good enough idea of what occurred with the aircraft to have come up with any kind of a theory as to what might have caused it to go missing,” said Capt. Michael Doubleday.
He noted that there had been fresh snow in Colorado since the plane disappeared and “there are cases where aircraft disappear in the winter and then turn up some time later, after the snows have melted.”
Tim Cochrane of Vail Mountain Rescue told CBS News that a group of cross-country skiers on a nearby ridge heard a large boom, which was followed by a tremendous black cloud, but they never saw a plane. Bad weather hampered a search of the area Wednesday.
The Air Force opened a telephone hot line, 520-228-6350, to seek further reports of sightings or other information.
According to Davis-Monthan spokesman Lt. Brad Scott, Button’s A-10 was part of a flight of three A-10s that had taken off from the base near Tucson the morning of April 2 bound for the Barry M. Goldwater Training Range to the west, along the U.S.-Mexico border, for gunnery and bombing practice.
About 90 miles from the range and 20 miles southeast of Gila Bend, Ariz., Button’s A-10 suddenly dropped out of the formation without warning.
After about a minute, the flight leader made a radio check with both his pilots, but only one responded.
Button made no distress call and gave no indication of his flight intentions. There was no further communication with him.
Had the pilot bailed out, an automatic distress signal would have been activated, but none was detected.
Instead, his A-10 was sighted by radar and ground observers as it flew in a completely different direction than called for in the training mission, heading on a straight course to the northeast that took it across Arizona into the mountains of central Colorado.
The last radar sighting was in the Telluride area, about 200 miles southwest of Denver. The airplane was visually sighted again west of Denver in the Vail area, where it was observed circling and then changing course.
This served to dispel theories that Button had blacked out with his plane on autopilot. “The aircraft was definitely being flown,” Scott said.
Pentagon investigators are looking into Button’s background.
According to Air Force records, the 32-year-old pilot from Massapequa, N.Y., has been on active duty since April 1991. He previously served as a flight instructor in T-37 trainers at Laughlin AFB, Texas, and as a trainee in fighter and air controller courses at Columbus AFB, Miss.
He had been assigned to Davis-Monthan AFB only last Feb. 2.
“He was A-OK, stable, didn’t seem to be under any stress,” the pilot’s father told the Associated Press. “But he was having to study hard,” said Richard Button, who trained pilots during World War II.
Designed for low-level attack against enemy tanks, artillery emplacements and fortified positions, the 32,000-pound, single-seat A-10 needs only 2,000 feet of runway for landing, even when loaded with bombs and ammunition.
But there are few airstrips in the mountains where the plane was last sighted, and the terrain is inhospitable to crash landings. As is common practice during routine training missions, the plane’s transponder, which would have aided in tracking and locating the aircraft, had not been turned on.
According to Lt. Wilson Camelo, public affairs officer at California’s Beale AFB, where one of the U-2s is based, the high-flying spy plane made famous in the Cold War is well equipped for this kind of search mission.
It has special image sensors and high-resolution, deep-focus aerial surveillance cameras.
The Beale U-2 entered the search effort Monday and was joined Wednesday by another U-2 from Palmdale, Calif.
U-2 spy planes have joined the hunt for an A-10
Thunderbolt, piloted by Capt. Craig Button (right),
that disappeared during training a week ago.
