Weather Aids Search For Missing A-10 Air And Ground Searchers Comb Rugged Mountains For Clues

Air and ground crews Wednesday got nice weather to help them in the search for a missing Air Force jet that disappeared more than two weeks ago with a pilot and four bombs.

Three Civil Air Patrol planes and three Army National Guard aircraft were in use, along with ground crews searching two areas three to four miles east of the rugged New York Mountain range where the A-10 Thunderbolt is believed to have gone down.

Lt. Gen. Frank Campbell, a military spokesman, said at a news briefing Wednesday morning that searchers hope the sunshine will reduce the snow that has made the hunt difficult.

More than 330 search flights across the Rockies southwest of Vail have turned up no sign of the $9 million Thunderbolt or Capt. Craig Button, who veered away from an Arizona training formation on April 2.

On Tuesday, Capt. Michael Doubleday, a Pentagon official, said the search will continue indefinitely, “as long as there’s some hope that we’ll find something, as long as technology allows us to search in any kind of a coordinated way.”

Ground searches of New York Mountain turned up no new clues Tuesday.

Officials said they plan to re-interview people who reported seeing a crash and bring in a 10-member team to look at evidence with “fresh eyes.”

The team is made up of officials from the Air Force’s air staff and air combat personnel from Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Va.

Campbell reiterated that the Air Force has found nothing in Button’s background that would indicate he may have stolen the plane.