One of the greatest mystery incidents surrounding the A-10 Warthog's career is what happened on the final flight of Capt. Craig Button. On April 2, 1997, Button took off in his A-10 on a training mission out of Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, Ariz. He then broke formation with the other A-10s and flew northeast toward the Four Corners area after being refueled. This training mission would have been the first time the 32-year-old would have dropped live ordnance. Button's A-10 was armed with 4x Mark 82 bombs, 60 magnesium flares, and 120x metal chaff canisters. Its iconic GAU-8 Avenger gun was loaded with 575 rounds of 30-mm ammo. People on the ground spotted him many times, with one off-duty pilot saying the aircraft appeared to maneuver around bad weather. That suggests that Button was in control of the aircraft and flying it deliberately. While the transponder was non-operational (likely switched off), radar tracked the A-10. He disappeared from radar around Vail, Colo. Finally, with 2–5 minutes of fuel left in his tank, he crashed into Gold Dust Peak in the Holy Cross Wilderness near Vail. The Air Force determined that Button made no attempt to eject. Instead, it seems he chose to crash his Warthog right into the side of the mountain. It took the Air Force three weeks to find the crash site, during which time a number of suspicions and conspiracy theories started to emerge. The four 500-pound Mk 82 bombers were never found, despite an exhaustive search effort using metal detectors and even ground-penetrating radar. These bombs were designed to survive such a crash. When the bomb racks were eventually found, analysis suggested they had not been released. The leading explanation for why Button did what he did was suicide. Some say it was unrequited love, other say he was gay and afraid of being outed, while yet others wonder if he wanted to steal the bombs on his aircraft, taking a cue from the 1996 movie Broken Arrow. That part of the Craig Button story will remain a mystery.
