DATE: Thursday, April 10, 1997              TAG: 9704100435

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A18  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS

DATELINE: PHOENIX                           LENGTH:   65 lines

DISAPPEARANCE OF PILOT, JET REMAINS A MYSTERY

After Capt. Craig David Button's bomb-laden Air Force jet broke from formation and he failed to answer a call a minute later, some thought he became incapacitated and put the jet on autopilot, or ejected after trouble.

But ejection should have activated an automatic homing device, which didn't happen when the A-10 Thunderbolt disappeared April 2.

Radar records indicate the plane's path was initially straight - backing the autopilot theory - but the jet changed course 800 miles away over Aspen, Colo., something that would require a pilot at the helm.

Is it possible the pilot stole the plane?

Visual sightings in Colorado near Montrose and later near the Vail-Aspen area reported that the aircraft appeared to be circling, ``so, in our opinion, the aircraft was being flown at that time,'' Col. Barry Barksdale, commander of the 355th Fighter Wing at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, said Wednesday.

To cover all the bases, investigators are sifting through Button's background.

``The investigation . . . includes all aspects of the plane and pilot, anything to do with the situation,'' said Staff Sgt. Bret Zieman, a spokesman at Davis-Monthan.

A signal beacon would not have triggered automatically if the plane crashed, Barksdale said.

Snow Wednesday kept Air National Guard and Civil Air Patrol searchers from resuming the hunt for the jet.

The mystery began on the morning of April 2 after Button's plane took off in formation from Davis-Monthan with two other A-10s bound for a bombing range in southwestern Arizona. The plane was carrying four non-nuclear bombs and mounted machine guns.

Button was with the rest until about 90 minutes into the flight. The other pilots broke formation and began the search, spotting nothing.

Initially, the search focused in Arizona, but it shifted to Colorado - nearly 800 miles off course - three days later after authorities checked radar records and witnesses there reported seeing a low-flying plane.

The plane may have gone down in the New York Mountain area, near Edwards, Colo., at which time it would have been nearly out of fuel. The last radar trace of the A-10 is there amid the snow-covered Rocky Mountains.

But officials were also looking elsewhere.

The Pentagon was checking into the time Button spent at Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio, Texas, where he was a flight instructor until he arrived in Tucson in February to train on the A-10. CBS reported Monday that Button had asked that his training flights at Laughlin be routed through Colorado.

Button's relatives said there is nothing suspicious about the 32-year-old Massapequa, N.Y., native.

``He was A-OK, stable, didn't seem to be under any stress. But he was having to study hard,'' said the captain's father, Richard Button, who had trained pilots during World War II.

An Air Force official at the Pentagon said Button had made many cross-country flying trips during his training, and they may have involved stops in Colorado. Button has a brother in Denver.

The Air Force's Office of Special Investigations has been called in, the unit which typically handles criminal matters, such as fraud and counterintelligence.

``Anything you can think of has probably been looked at,'' said Staff Sgt. Rian Clawson at Davis-Monthan. ``But the evidence so far doesn't indicate any of these wild hypotheses, like he was trying to steal it, or he went off to Telluride to go skiing.''

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