Weather Blocks Search For Missing A-10

An elite search-and-rescue team aboard the Air Force’s largest and most powerful helicopter was turned back twice Tuesday by dangerous weather as it tried to approach the high mountain peak where officials believe a missing A-10 warplane crashed three weeks ago after mysteriously disappearing from a training run in southern Arizona.

The site of the probable crash is only eight miles south of here, but the wreckage is scattered above 12,500 feet on a steep, unstable slope high on Gold Dust Peak in the New York Mountains southwest of Vail.

Since the discovery Sunday of a handful of gray metal fragments around Gold Dust Peak, attempts to reach the site have been repeatedly thwarted by atrocious weather, the peak socked in by swirling snow and freezing rain.

Since Air Force officials do not expect to recover the missing pilot alive, they are not willing to risk their team in the mountains.