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Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways, I don't just stories of things we simply
Speaker 1: don't know the answer. To be there and welcome again
Speaker 1: to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I am Steve, of course,
Speaker 1: as always, joined by and Joe, and once again we
Speaker 1: have a mystery. Once again we have a listener suggested mystery,
Speaker 1: and it's an aeronautical mystery, it is. And yes, I
Speaker 1: know there's probably somebody out there going, oh god, Steve
Speaker 1: is doing another plane mystery. But hey with us, because
Speaker 1: I actually sort of managed to find a story that
Speaker 1: combines my last two episodes. Like I said, my last
Speaker 1: two episodes. So today's story was a listener's suggestion. As
Speaker 1: I said, it was suggested by Mr W So thank you,
Speaker 1: sir um. And this week what we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about is Air Force pilot Captain Craig D. Button, who
Speaker 1: died when his A ten Thunderbolt to better known as
Speaker 1: a ward Hog, crashed into the side of gold Dust
Speaker 1: Peak in the Rocky Mountain Rain in Colorado. Button it
Speaker 1: apparently gone completely off mission. He had no reason to
Speaker 1: be in that area. He kind of did. He sort
Speaker 1: wandered off the reservation. Yeah, a little bit. So before
Speaker 1: we get in the mystery, let's do a little bit
Speaker 1: of backstory here. Let's talk about Mr. Button. That was
Speaker 1: his last name. That was the name his parents gave him,
Speaker 1: which their parents probably gave before them. That's how this works.
Speaker 1: Job Okay, Well one of their parents gave them one
Speaker 1: of them. Well they theoretically they were both married, so
Speaker 1: they they would have this is never mind, let's just
Speaker 1: keep moving forward. Does his name plane work? Oh it's
Speaker 1: going to be a long night. Um so, no, Craig Button.
Speaker 1: At the time of his death, he was thirty two
Speaker 1: years old. He had been flying plane since his late teens,
Speaker 1: and he was always described as a straight shooter. He
Speaker 1: didn't smoke, he almost never drank. He went to college
Speaker 1: at the New York Institute of Technology, and while he
Speaker 1: was there, he was in the Air Force r OTC program, which,
Speaker 1: for people who don't know, is the Reserve Officer Training
Speaker 1: corps UM. And while he was there, when he graduated.
Speaker 1: He got a degree in aerospace engineering, which doesn't smart guy,
Speaker 1: and it's probably not easy to get. I don't imagine
Speaker 1: that is an easy degree. Now, it's too bad to
Speaker 1: crash this planet going for him, he really did. Hey,
Speaker 1: did we say what year this is? This is is
Speaker 1: when this whole thing goes down? Sorry, I just realized
Speaker 1: I had no idea what time frame we're Well, that's
Speaker 1: that's because I was giving the backstory first and then
Speaker 1: we were going to jump forward to the actual time.
Speaker 1: So we are not yet in We are instead in
Speaker 1: the early nineties when he was in college. He graduated
Speaker 1: and almost it sounds like, basically immediately turned around and
Speaker 1: went into the US Air Force. That's kind of the
Speaker 1: way our TC works. I think they give you a scholarship,
Speaker 1: then you turn around and you've got to kind of join.
Speaker 1: You kind of gotta repay it in a way. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: But you know the thing is is that he seemed
Speaker 1: to be totally happy in the Air Force. He initially,
Speaker 1: after basic training, he spent four years at Laflett Air
Speaker 1: Force Base, which is in Texas. He was a flight
Speaker 1: instructor there and then later after that four year stint,
Speaker 1: he transferred to Davis month And Air Force Base, which
Speaker 1: is in Arizona. He was going to go too into
Speaker 1: the training program for flying the ten. I'd love to
Speaker 1: fly Award Hog. It's cool plane. We should talk about
Speaker 1: we should talk about it real quickly. What you probably do.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people do know what
Speaker 1: the word hog is. By look, you just probably don't
Speaker 1: know the name. It's a it's a very distinct looking plane.
Speaker 1: It's a single seater, so there's no copilot, it's just
Speaker 1: the pilot. It's got kind of a stubby nose in
Speaker 1: the front and the kind of horizontal tail that the
Speaker 1: H shaped tail, which means there's the horizontal fin and
Speaker 1: then a vertical on each side. But the most distinguishing
Speaker 1: feature is its engines, which are mounted on between the
Speaker 1: wing and the tail and above them, and it's there
Speaker 1: directed amounted directly onto the fuselage. So it's got these big,
Speaker 1: huge turbans attached to the side of Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: a it's a it's an ugly plane, but I it's
Speaker 1: pretty in its own way. And the other thing about
Speaker 1: it too, is it doesn't have like your typical jets,
Speaker 1: and unlike a typical jets. It doesn't have the sweatback
Speaker 1: stubby wings. They're straight, nice, big, straight, horizontal, rectangular wings,
Speaker 1: which is great because it gives it a really nice,
Speaker 1: really low stall speed. Yeh, stall speed on that things
Speaker 1: hud twenty miles an hour. And that's without flaps. Because
Speaker 1: I saw what in an air show once and he
Speaker 1: flew right by in front of us really low, I
Speaker 1: mean really low, and then and then it just turned
Speaker 1: his nose up like this and took off again. But
Speaker 1: I could swear he was going a lot slower than
Speaker 1: folks too, don't know. Stall speed is when the thing
Speaker 1: stops flying. Yeah, that's what that's what starts to falla fly.
Speaker 1: But no, they're they're really cool. They are. They're very
Speaker 1: blatantly designed for one thing, and that is blowing stuff up. Though.
Speaker 1: Um it's got that stubby nose because it's got a
Speaker 1: giant thirty millimeter can in in the nose and that cannon.
Speaker 1: The fuselage of the body of the plane is actually
Speaker 1: built around that cannon. It's so huge. The wings are
Speaker 1: meant to hold all kinds of munitions. I saw a
Speaker 1: picture of one that was banking and it looked I
Speaker 1: think there was a total of ten projectiles on it,
Speaker 1: so it was all kinds of different missiles and bombs
Speaker 1: and the thing was just like bristling for wars, like
Speaker 1: don't mess with it. It's gonna throw everything. And plus
Speaker 1: that thirty mechanic can really lay down some fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it drops an amazing amount of ammunition in a second.
Speaker 1: It's it's really it's crazy. It's the depleted geranium bullets.
Speaker 1: And when they want to be armor piercing, yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and they can take out a tank real easy. And
Speaker 1: that's that's and that's what that slow saw speed really
Speaker 1: comes in handy because if you're going over like a
Speaker 1: column like a tank Callum or something like that, you
Speaker 1: gotta take your sweet time and just you know, and
Speaker 1: get lots of rounds into each one of them. So yeah,
Speaker 1: going as fast as you can and hoping that you
Speaker 1: hit them with something. Yes, So it has a military advantage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And just just to editorialize a little bit, every periodically
Speaker 1: the Air Force announces that they're going to phase out
Speaker 1: the A ten. They've done it at least a couple
Speaker 1: of times now, and you know, I think it's a
Speaker 1: ploy to just get Congress to pony up more cash
Speaker 1: and just says, uh, you know, we want to face
Speaker 1: out the A ten because you know, we just think
Speaker 1: that we do it with supply lines and support personnel
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. It will save us a bunch
Speaker 1: of money we can put towards our fancier stuff. And
Speaker 1: and and everybody else says, are you freaking crazy? And
Speaker 1: then and then and then Congress ponies up a little
Speaker 1: more money. So I don't think they really intend to
Speaker 1: do service for a long time. Well, they're planning on
Speaker 1: keeping them in service for a whole lot longer. Well,
Speaker 1: that's what I means. They've been in service for a
Speaker 1: long time. They as far as I look. When I
Speaker 1: looked at it, it doesn't appear that they're making new
Speaker 1: A tens. They're just maintaining their existing stock. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they built a lot of these things. They did. They
Speaker 1: really did enough about the A ten. We're gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and we're gonna jump to February. Um Button started
Speaker 1: his A ten training at Davis monthon the third of February.
Speaker 1: It's a a D two day program, so he should
Speaker 1: have been done sometime in the spring, and at that
Speaker 1: point he was scheduled to strang to transfer out to. Oh, Joe,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to help me with the name of
Speaker 1: this air base. Okay, I'll go with that. Which is
Speaker 1: an air Yeah, which is an air base in Germany. Um. So,
Speaker 1: upon completion of his training, he already had orders to
Speaker 1: ship out to somewhere else, so he was expected to
Speaker 1: obviously passage training. We're gonna move about two months into
Speaker 1: his training to the second of April, Button and two
Speaker 1: other planes take off. They have a mission where they're
Speaker 1: gonna fly from Davis month and Air Force Base to
Speaker 1: what's called the Goldwater Gunnering Range, which is kind of
Speaker 1: near Hella Bend, Arizona. And for a bit of reference,
Speaker 1: Hella Bend is on the very bottom edge of the state.
Speaker 1: It's about a hundred miles or a hundred sixty pometers
Speaker 1: from the Mexico border. And it's also about a hundred
Speaker 1: miles I believe it is west of the actual air
Speaker 1: Force base, so's it's kind of in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 1: And where's Davis Monthum, it's about a hundred miles or
Speaker 1: so from Phoenix, Arizona. And that's a that's an off
Speaker 1: the top of my head, Yes, yes, yeah, Usually these
Speaker 1: bombing ranges that could usually kind of out yeah for goods,
Speaker 1: because you don't want a bunch of people around. So
Speaker 1: the the U. S. Air Force, they don't typically make
Speaker 1: their practice runs a straight line. You want to get
Speaker 1: some time on the sticks, so they would They were
Speaker 1: known for doing things like circling around the state and
Speaker 1: taking kind of a roundabout route to get to the
Speaker 1: gunnery range. And indeed that appears to be what they did.
Speaker 1: Before they got to the gunnery range, all of the
Speaker 1: planes in his formation fueled up. So in air fueling,
Speaker 1: which is not an easy thing. We were just talking
Speaker 1: about this. It's like, try to get a straw at
Speaker 1: four hundred miles an hour onto something below you. I can't.
Speaker 1: It sounds amazingly, but all the wind speed is really
Speaker 1: what I'm reacting to, and they probably don't do it
Speaker 1: four hundred miles an hour. It's definitely hard though. It's crazy,
Speaker 1: I would think, especially in turbulence, and there's turbulence quite
Speaker 1: a lot of the time about Yeah. So they go
Speaker 1: through this fueling process and then Button drops back behind
Speaker 1: the other two planes and a bit of a follow
Speaker 1: the leader formation, and this is expected, and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden he um turns and he leaves the
Speaker 1: formation and the mission leader sees him flying away and
Speaker 1: calls him on the radio, but he doesn't respond. As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, he's turned off. This plane, by
Speaker 1: the way, has three radios on it. He turns off
Speaker 1: all of his radios or stops responding to them, and
Speaker 1: he turns off his transponders for tracking purposes, and he
Speaker 1: just goes dark, and he just flies away and heads
Speaker 1: off in a northeasterly past and he's gone from there,
Speaker 1: it is, And the U. S. Air Force really didn't
Speaker 1: know what to make of it, and they had no
Speaker 1: idea what was going on. And it took nearly two
Speaker 1: weeks to piece together where he had gone and what
Speaker 1: had happened, based on sightings from people on the ground, because,
Speaker 1: like we talked about, this plane is so recognizable, its
Speaker 1: profile is very unique. And then they started finding records
Speaker 1: in uh airfield's radar logs to say that they had
Speaker 1: spotted him, that nobody evidently got a hold of him.
Speaker 1: And interesting, isn't it. Yeah, seem wrong. It seems a
Speaker 1: little weird that nobody contacted him more recorded, Hey, what
Speaker 1: the hell is going on? Yeah? I mean, it's if
Speaker 1: there's a plane, right basically a bogey that's not responding
Speaker 1: at all, and it's not that nobody plan and like
Speaker 1: there's a report of it being like heavily laden with munitions.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't see that that, but you don't know, like
Speaker 1: somebody might call I don't know any even if not
Speaker 1: thought that he had gone down somewhere in the area
Speaker 1: of where he had broke formation. So that is one
Speaker 1: thing to keep in Even if they had didn't have
Speaker 1: reports of you know, him being having munitions or anything
Speaker 1: like that, it's still like a war vehicle that's not responding.
Speaker 1: That's just very expensive vehicle yet through. But that also
Speaker 1: you know, any of the any of the airspace that
Speaker 1: he was flying through, was like, oh, we don't know
Speaker 1: why that's there, but okay, you're not responding, no problem,
Speaker 1: we won't send someone to figure out what's going on.
Speaker 1: You're definitely not going to do any kind of like
Speaker 1: terrorist e blowy uppy things. Well, now, the a of
Speaker 1: the airfields he was going past, you're talking about people
Speaker 1: that small, the small airfields. There's not like he was
Speaker 1: going past Denver International Airport and get picked up. Although
Speaker 1: that is the direction he ends up going. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: let's because because they were able to piece all this together,
Speaker 1: we we have an idea of his path. So he
Speaker 1: after he breaks formation, he spotted flying northeast past Lake Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: which is in Arizona, and that itself is about a
Speaker 1: hundred miles or hundred sixty kilometers northeast of Phoenix and
Speaker 1: at about and that's at about twelve thirty. And then
Speaker 1: he's seen passing near Tell Your Ride, Colorado around one
Speaker 1: o'clock that day, one oh eight pm, which is kind
Speaker 1: of a weirdly specific time. But he's spotted near Montrose, Colorado.
Speaker 1: When did he take off? He took off just before noon,
Speaker 1: just several minutes before twelve, so he made he made
Speaker 1: really good time. So in an hour and eight minutes
Speaker 1: they were able to puts around and then do a
Speaker 1: refielding thing and and and he was able to take off, well, takeoff,
Speaker 1: take off, I mean, when did he actually lift off
Speaker 1: from the ground Air Force base. I have not seen
Speaker 1: the time that his is his flight group left, I
Speaker 1: didn't see that recorded, so I can't I can't answer that.
Speaker 1: All I do know is I know that the time
Speaker 1: that he broke away so I don't know exactly how
Speaker 1: long he was in the air. Um. So he then
Speaker 1: at that point, like I said, he goes from Montrose
Speaker 1: from that point. Before that point, I should say he
Speaker 1: had been coming in basically a straight line. He hadn't
Speaker 1: really been changing elevation, just he's cruising from here, is
Speaker 1: flying changes rather dramatically. He is seen flying in kind
Speaker 1: of a zigzag pattern, and he's changing altitude. I think
Speaker 1: it was anywhere from sixteen thousand feet to four thousand feet.
Speaker 1: He's a great no, not a great idea in the Rockies,
Speaker 1: you're right. Um. So, here's what his path is is
Speaker 1: that after one oh eight, he turns a few degrees
Speaker 1: more east and now he's going even more easterly. About
Speaker 1: five minutes or ish later, he does a basically a
Speaker 1: hundred n eighty degree turn and now he's heading south.
Speaker 1: And then about five minutes later he turns again, and
Speaker 1: now he's heading northeast again for approximately enter five or
Speaker 1: ten minutes. And these are all approximates because it's based
Speaker 1: on you know, sightings and stuff like that. But around
Speaker 1: one forty in the afternoon, the residents of Aspen in
Speaker 1: the area around it, they reported hearing a really loud explosion,
Speaker 1: and they said they saw smoke coming from the New
Speaker 1: York Mountain area, which is not far from gold Dust Peak.
Speaker 1: It's no, it's basically right next door. Yeah, but then
Speaker 1: how far is that from Aspen Ballpark? I'm going to
Speaker 1: say that it's less than fifty miles, and that's a
Speaker 1: ballpark number off the top of my head. I didn't
Speaker 1: never actually trace the how far it was because I
Speaker 1: never got an exact point for where he hit. In
Speaker 1: other words, I never went to the uh satellite images
Speaker 1: and tried to find that. But I have a ballpark
Speaker 1: about fifty miles and I'm probably wrong. Well, what, obviously,
Speaker 1: as as you've probably guessed by some of the things
Speaker 1: that we've said so far, what those people heard was
Speaker 1: Craig Buttons ten flying into the side of gold Dust
Speaker 1: Peaks and s okay, so I was wrong. It's three
Speaker 1: times as far as I thought. It was pretty dang close. Yes,
Speaker 1: probably too far to actually hear the sound of the
Speaker 1: plane crashing. No, just I think that they could hear
Speaker 1: a bit of an explosion, you know, it's muffled over
Speaker 1: and like that, or maybe something else blew up. I mean, thanks,
Speaker 1: to blow up. They do. Yeah, so button hits. He
Speaker 1: strikes the mountain at about a hundred feet below its
Speaker 1: peak or thirty meters below its peak. And by the way,
Speaker 1: the elevation of the peak of that mountain is around
Speaker 1: two hundred feet, which is four thousand meters. When, by
Speaker 1: the way, whether was there cover, Yes, there was some
Speaker 1: cloud cover. He was seen flying around the clouds and
Speaker 1: ducking through holes in the clouds, coming in and out.
Speaker 1: So that's why people think, well, it's weird. They were
Speaker 1: so straight and then suddenly he was flying around the weather.
Speaker 1: It's very strange that he would be doing that all
Speaker 1: of a sudden. But I'm guessing if he's at a
Speaker 1: lower altitude then it might become a problem at that point.
Speaker 1: Um okay. So, like I said, US Air Force to
Speaker 1: take him a couple of weeks to figure out what's
Speaker 1: going on. They then start combing the area and they
Speaker 1: eventually find the crash site and they're able to get
Speaker 1: people onto the mountain, which takes a little bit longer
Speaker 1: because the weather is really bad. You know, it's April
Speaker 1: or snow, it's Colorado. When they get there, though, they
Speaker 1: discover several things. Uh. The first of which is that
Speaker 1: they find the wreckage of his plane, and they find
Speaker 1: his body, and they find the computer that is on
Speaker 1: board the plane. But what they don't find is the
Speaker 1: bombs because because by the way, I didn't mention this,
Speaker 1: but his his training run was using live ammunition, and
Speaker 1: the war Hog was carrying four five hundred pound Mark
Speaker 1: two bombs. They are they're called the dumb bomb. They
Speaker 1: are not a guided missile of any way, shape or form.
Speaker 1: You you can, but these were not. It is a
Speaker 1: five hundred pound bomb that when it hits the ground,
Speaker 1: causes a big hole and blows stuff. Just a normal bomb.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a general purpose explosives. It's not like
Speaker 1: a nuke or anything crazy. Conventional explosives, but you know,
Speaker 1: I mean obviously still devastating. Oh yeah, not so they
Speaker 1: flame the effort. They can flame trapnel for like a mile.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they And we'll talk about some of the
Speaker 1: specs on him in a bit, but they do. They
Speaker 1: do some serious damp. I just wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: we were talking like, no, no crazy weapons, so weird
Speaker 1: uranium trade or something like that. Bob, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it goes. It's pretty it's pretty apparent he or the
Speaker 1: the US Air Force. As soon as they find everything
Speaker 1: and they figure out that the marketing twos aren't there,
Speaker 1: they start combing the entire area around the crash site.
Speaker 1: They make a very very intense I'm I'm guessing it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's I'm guessing that the kind of search
Speaker 1: they did was, you know, people on foot, not just
Speaker 1: circling overhead, because they're using things like ground penetrating radar.
Speaker 1: Within a several mile perimeter of where the crash happens.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of little lakes in that area, and
Speaker 1: so they actually started sending divers into those lakes with
Speaker 1: the idea that maybe the bombs dropped and they hit
Speaker 1: the water and they either were not activated or they
Speaker 1: didn't just didn't go off because they hit the water
Speaker 1: and sank, rather than going in those first and and
Speaker 1: of course this search, you know, like I said, it
Speaker 1: took him two weeks to figure out where where he
Speaker 1: was his plane had gone, and then couldn't get right
Speaker 1: in right away, so it takes several weeks to get there.
Speaker 1: So we're looking at like a month or two lay eater,
Speaker 1: because they went and did an initial search and then
Speaker 1: they had to stop because of the weather. And then
Speaker 1: when they got back there, because obviously the snow melt
Speaker 1: had happened, the debris field has shifted downhill. So that's
Speaker 1: why it was kind of tough to figure out where
Speaker 1: everything was. But there's there's looking everywhere because they want
Speaker 1: to know where the hell are these bombs tiny? No,
Speaker 1: they're not at all. They're they're pretty big. And the
Speaker 1: nice thing about the market D two is that the
Speaker 1: pilot has to arm the bomb. It is not as
Speaker 1: if they are flying around with something that it could
Speaker 1: just go off at anyone, because that's just foolish. But
Speaker 1: they were pretty sure that he hadn't armed the bombs,
Speaker 1: which is probably why they should just be laying somewhere
Speaker 1: and easily found. It's unlikely because I mean, they knew
Speaker 1: as approximate flight course and so actually they flew over
Speaker 1: it looking for big craters, so that's one way to
Speaker 1: know that they did not. Yeah. Um, now there's a
Speaker 1: couple of things here that about it. That I said
Speaker 1: that the flight computer on the plane was found, and
Speaker 1: that would have recorded what he had done with the bombs.
Speaker 1: It would have it wouldn't have recorded say where he
Speaker 1: would have dropped them, but it would have said were
Speaker 1: they dropped and were they armed wind dropped? I thought
Speaker 1: that wasn't the most weather resistant computer though. Oh it
Speaker 1: also wasn't very shock resistant because because the impact destroyed
Speaker 1: it and they couldn't recover any data off of it.
Speaker 1: I have read conflicting accounts of this next bit that
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about here, which is the racks
Speaker 1: on the wings of the plane. I've seen sources that
Speaker 1: said that they the racks were not disengaged. In other words,
Speaker 1: I think of it as a clamp. Clamp is engaged,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be holding onto it, and disengaged it is
Speaker 1: going to be open. They said those clamps on the
Speaker 1: struts of the wings were still engaged, so he shouldn't
Speaker 1: have dropped the bomb. In other words, it couldn't. It's
Speaker 1: not as if when he dropped them they close again.
Speaker 1: So in other words, I've heard it both ways too,
Speaker 1: Although if he had crashed with the bombs attached, they
Speaker 1: should have ripped free, and I would imagine also but
Speaker 1: also that the mounds would have been also seriously ripped
Speaker 1: corn off to Yeah, and the accounts that's that say
Speaker 1: that he released the bombs before I've actually found more
Speaker 1: credible than the other counts. So yeah, I think he
Speaker 1: released him well before crash and he made very well.
Speaker 1: And that's that actually is kind of the end of
Speaker 1: the story, which actually just with two different mysteries. One
Speaker 1: what did did Button commits suicide? Because that's one of
Speaker 1: the main things you will hear. Why did he fly?
Speaker 1: What what happened? Why was he there? Why did he
Speaker 1: break formation? And to what happened to the market he twos?
Speaker 1: So we have two mysteries and we're gonna start with
Speaker 1: the first one that I just brought up, which is
Speaker 1: did he or did he not actually commits suicide? Because
Speaker 1: that is the most popular one and you will see
Speaker 1: a lot of reporting on it, and you will get
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff from the U. S. Air Force
Speaker 1: that seems to indicate that he did intentionally commit suicide
Speaker 1: by Mountain m H. Just to clarify um real quick
Speaker 1: before we jumped into he was like like very talented
Speaker 1: right there. I knew that he was talented. He was
Speaker 1: a good pilot. They don't let any idiot fly that point, right,
Speaker 1: But like compared to his peers, was he like, you know,
Speaker 1: way better? He was a flight instructor for several years,
Speaker 1: which I would take to indicate that he was skilled stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: And as after that, I couldn't. I couldn't comment on
Speaker 1: how he ranked among his his fellow airmen. Cool, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say, you've been flying for since he was seventeen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: probably a good plot and a good pilot. Yeah. Okay,
Speaker 1: So first, before we even get into the theories, I
Speaker 1: am going to say reiterate what we said earlier, which
Speaker 1: is he was considered a straight shooter. He didn't smoke,
Speaker 1: he didn't drink, and there is nothing that ever came
Speaker 1: up in his body that ever said that he had
Speaker 1: any substance abuse issues or that he was drunk at
Speaker 1: the time or anything crazy like that. So those are
Speaker 1: easy things to just sweep out of the way. Initially,
Speaker 1: there was also no evidence of hypoxia, right not. No,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I saw thoughts about that, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that a little bit more later, but I don't
Speaker 1: believe that that was the case. First first sub theory
Speaker 1: inside of suicide is the reason was family objections. From
Speaker 1: all of the accounts that I've read, Button was excited
Speaker 1: about the fact that he was going to get to
Speaker 1: transferred and go to Europe. He was happy where he was,
Speaker 1: and everybody seemed to think that he was in good shape.
Speaker 1: But according to this theory, he was actually semi secretly
Speaker 1: struggling with his family's religious beliefs. His mother and father
Speaker 1: were Jehovah's witnesses, and they had been in that religion
Speaker 1: for they converted about twenty years prior to that. Now,
Speaker 1: officially the Jehovah's Witnesses, they don't serve in the military.
Speaker 1: They pacifists, they don't believe in doing that. Um, it's
Speaker 1: against their beliefs. And based on his age and the
Speaker 1: how far back they had converted, I get the feeling
Speaker 1: that the family converted when he was a kid, you know,
Speaker 1: say ten twelve, somewhere in that age system. And I
Speaker 1: don't believe that he actually became a member of the church,
Speaker 1: which would explain why he went into the Air Force.
Speaker 1: But his wasn't. His dad also the World War two
Speaker 1: and Vietnam era pilot, yes, but that was prior to
Speaker 1: the conversion. So he did that and he served his
Speaker 1: military career before finding his faith. According to this the
Speaker 1: thing is is that his mother, because of the religious beliefs,
Speaker 1: she was not happy about him being in the military,
Speaker 1: and she tried to convince him to leave the military
Speaker 1: on a very regular basis. Uh. In some families, that
Speaker 1: is known as nagging mom. I don't know how these
Speaker 1: conversations went, but I get the feeling that sometimes they
Speaker 1: weren't always the happiest affairs. But you know, I can
Speaker 1: think of alternatives to suicide. If you've got that issue.
Speaker 1: Number One, mom gets your way. Number Two, you just
Speaker 1: don't talk to mom that much. There's there's a number
Speaker 1: of ways around this, but we're going to continue on
Speaker 1: with it. Even though Joe has a simple solution there,
Speaker 1: that's what I would have done. So there he goes,
Speaker 1: Button experiences a crisis of faith when he realizes, as
Speaker 1: some people have said, he said, he was being trained
Speaker 1: to kill people, and it was this crisis that made
Speaker 1: him decide instead of just simply quitting to take his
Speaker 1: own life. To be it's probably a little more complicated
Speaker 1: than that. Very unsimplifying this a lot. Well. I just mean,
Speaker 1: if he did the r OTC program right, he owed
Speaker 1: the U. S. Government a ton of money. If he
Speaker 1: were to say, hey, I know you guys just paid
Speaker 1: for me to full ride through four years of college.
Speaker 1: But I'm not saying that he like actively owed. But
Speaker 1: I don't think you can just drop out of the
Speaker 1: military two months after. But but they don't full ride,
Speaker 1: you believe me. I remember, guys, I was in college
Speaker 1: at the same time as this guy, and I remember
Speaker 1: the kids in the r OTC program when I was there,
Speaker 1: and they it was they got a healthy amount, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't as if the the r OTC paid them
Speaker 1: a full ride because they hey, college kids are unreliable
Speaker 1: and they can't support every one of the little boogers. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so he did, he was required to serve a certain
Speaker 1: amount of time. He would have owed them a lot
Speaker 1: of money. That he definitely would. But I mean, don't
Speaker 1: go into the r OTC because their parents can pay
Speaker 1: for their college because they're from really well off families
Speaker 1: usually right, because they need help paying for it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I just I mean, I think it's a little
Speaker 1: more complicated than like, oh, he could have just quit
Speaker 1: his job. Well now, I mean, nobody's saying it could
Speaker 1: have quit his job, even you know, money aside. That's
Speaker 1: just not the way the military works. You signed, you
Speaker 1: sign your papers year four years or six years. But
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's also the thing called the transfer.
Speaker 1: You can say, I have an issue. I am now
Speaker 1: I've I've taken on this faith and i cannot fly.
Speaker 1: And you know the military has to have somebody that
Speaker 1: cleans the bathroom. Well, he could have gone back to
Speaker 1: being a flight instructor. Yeah, he could have done a
Speaker 1: million things. But now here's the other thing is is,
Speaker 1: from what I've heard, he said he really enjoyed blasting
Speaker 1: away with that thirty milita candy. And well, let's yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's the quote here and that's out. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's get to that right now. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna go back to the family, which is the
Speaker 1: family had visited in March, both his parents, and they
Speaker 1: said it was a great visit and he was happy
Speaker 1: and there was no problems. Um, there was no disagreements.
Speaker 1: And he apparently also he kept in touch with the
Speaker 1: people that he had been renting from when he was
Speaker 1: stationed in Texas, and he had written them a letter.
Speaker 1: Because this is back in the day when you still
Speaker 1: wrote real letters and sent them by mail letters such
Speaker 1: an antiquated system. But no, so he sends them a
Speaker 1: letter Strangely enough, they received that letter on the second
Speaker 1: of April, which is a little weird. But the letter says, actually, Joe,
Speaker 1: do you mind reading this? It's no, no, in your voice,
Speaker 1: not in your German voice? Okay? Uh quote. Flying is
Speaker 1: going well. I love the ten Most everything we do
Speaker 1: is low level. I'll be dropping live bombs this week.
Speaker 1: The gun is a blast my phone for a week
Speaker 1: just recently, and I took them to the Grand Canyon.
Speaker 1: Would you believe they had never been there before? Unquote?
Speaker 1: So that's that sounds like a very excited, happy guy
Speaker 1: doing what he really likes to do. Yeah, who you
Speaker 1: could blow things up? Yeah? Well, flying through the air?
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? Oh? Yeah, I believe me. I had.
Speaker 1: My dad was in the military for years and he
Speaker 1: loved the fact that he got the blow stuff up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I will just add to this theory. The thing that
Speaker 1: we always say around suicides doesn't mean that he had
Speaker 1: to have been I mean, you know, this isn't contingent
Speaker 1: on him have been, you know, particularly unhappy with that situation.
Speaker 1: He could have been hiding things. You know, people who
Speaker 1: appear happy killed themselves all the time. We don't want
Speaker 1: to belittle that. But let's talk about some other theories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that is the end of that theory. So we're
Speaker 1: going to go to uh sub theory too, which is
Speaker 1: the jilted lover theory. I feel like every time we
Speaker 1: do anything that's like air disappear or military or both
Speaker 1: really together of military artist appearance, there's always the jilted lover,
Speaker 1: and there's always the next one. Oh well, well, what
Speaker 1: about the the naval ones. The naval ones always have it.
Speaker 1: Half the US the UFO ones have this, and I actually,
Speaker 1: you know what, we should just make this a standard
Speaker 1: filler for all scripts. Actually don't. We just fell out
Speaker 1: a form anyway, we do see TPS report that's the one,
Speaker 1: not the TSP, the TPN. Yeah, the TSP TPS when
Speaker 1: we fill up. Okay, so no, the jilted lover. According
Speaker 1: to this theory, when Button joined the Air Force, he
Speaker 1: had a relationship with another classmate, and according to this reporting,
Speaker 1: he kind of sort of asked her to marry him
Speaker 1: and she turned him down, and that apparently he took
Speaker 1: that quite hard and it took him several years to
Speaker 1: get over. She apparently called him at the in Christmas
Speaker 1: and I don't know if they talked or was just
Speaker 1: left a message kind of scenario. I don't know. Um,
Speaker 1: I may be able to shed some light on this
Speaker 1: having dated someone who was in basic training ones, which
Speaker 1: I think is similar to this. You can't call them.
Speaker 1: I mean, well, they were both in the in the service,
Speaker 1: they were both she was also in the program. I
Speaker 1: don't know how that deals with at that point, but
Speaker 1: it's hard to get in contact with people who are
Speaker 1: in this sort of basic training. This is this is
Speaker 1: well past his basic training. I'm sorry, in any kind
Speaker 1: of training situation in the military, it is hard to
Speaker 1: get a hold of somebody. Okay, possibly maybe not now,
Speaker 1: but maybe back twenty years ago. No, actually it's still
Speaker 1: kind of hardy. They cut down the lines of communication.
Speaker 1: They really kind of you get to have your cell
Speaker 1: phone out there in the trenches. No, it turns out
Speaker 1: that Google maps not so good with the trenches. Neither
Speaker 1: his sirie. Okay, don't know what happens here is in
Speaker 1: nineties six Apparently she calls uh, he calls her back
Speaker 1: on the first of April, or calls her. I don't
Speaker 1: think they had had contact between Christmas, and then she's
Speaker 1: unable to talk at that time, though, and she takes
Speaker 1: his phone number down and then she calls him back
Speaker 1: on the fifth or the sixth of April, unaware that
Speaker 1: he had he had taken his plane and gone a wall.
Speaker 1: According to this theory, after we know this a little
Speaker 1: bit about this lady, the theory goes that he realized
Speaker 1: that he was in love with her and she wouldn't
Speaker 1: talk to him, and that coupled with the fact no joke,
Speaker 1: this is part of the theory that he had bought
Speaker 1: a VCR at a copy of The Bridges of Madison County.
Speaker 1: That was what pushed him over the edge. So that
Speaker 1: the last movie that poor guy ever saw that's the
Speaker 1: one that he bought with the VHS player. And by
Speaker 1: the way, this theory, this comes from the psychological autopsy
Speaker 1: that was by the US Air Force. And I've never
Speaker 1: heard of a psychological autopsy before. I can sort of
Speaker 1: see that. Can someone please tell me the plot of
Speaker 1: Bridges of Medicine County. It is a sad love not
Speaker 1: meant to be movie with Clint Eastwood and some other
Speaker 1: actress Barrel Street, and they they want to be but
Speaker 1: their lives won't let them and move. I never saw
Speaker 1: that movie. I never want to Oh, I don't, I
Speaker 1: don't ever want to watch like fifteen minutes once and
Speaker 1: then I ran, I've literally never heard of it. So
Speaker 1: you'll be trying for weeks. I'm a bad girl. I
Speaker 1: guess you are that. You know what I mean? Seriously
Speaker 1: to me, I don't want to see Clint Eastwood on
Speaker 1: the screen without a gun in his hands. Know his son,
Speaker 1: Scott Eastwood. I would see him any day of the
Speaker 1: all right, you too back on topic here, So we're
Speaker 1: gonna move from that silly theory to another silly theory,
Speaker 1: which is suicide sub theory three gay lover. Yep, this
Speaker 1: one's always in there as well. And I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: right now, I couldn't substantiate this except for a few
Speaker 1: places which mentioned a supposed undisclosed US Air Force insider
Speaker 1: who said that the Air Force had discovered that Craig
Speaker 1: Button was in the closet. No, this is something that
Speaker 1: came out and uh and has been out there for
Speaker 1: a while. Sorry that was a bad turn of phrase. Um,
Speaker 1: but no, this was out there for a while. And
Speaker 1: that's it's really There's not a whole lot to this, Joe,
Speaker 1: nothing to back it up. That's one and a half paragraphs. Yes,
Speaker 1: and that's because I patted it with a little bit
Speaker 1: of history. So the story goes that one of Craig's
Speaker 1: previous lovers was planning to come forward and disclose their relationship.
Speaker 1: And today that doesn't seem like it's a big deal.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm air quoting. Wouldn't be a big deal.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be a big deal to day, he shouldn't
Speaker 1: be a big deal. But but at the time, this
Speaker 1: is ninety seven, and in ninety four, Bill Clinton had
Speaker 1: signed into effect Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which said that
Speaker 1: if you were a closet, if you were in the closet,
Speaker 1: you could be a service member, but if you were
Speaker 1: out of the closet, you could not serve in any
Speaker 1: branch of the U. S. Military. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a huge known thing. But that would
Speaker 1: have meant, according to this law, that means that this
Speaker 1: person coming forward would have been the end of his
Speaker 1: military career, dish honorable discharge. Right, I'm not sure if no, no,
Speaker 1: not not by I mean in the days of McCarthy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that had totally been a court martial but not not
Speaker 1: at this point. But I think it was a discharge.
Speaker 1: It was definitely wasn't an honorable discharge either, but I
Speaker 1: don't remember the specifics of how they did it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there there's like honorable general and dishonorable. And I don't
Speaker 1: think they're gonna waste time on a court martial. Even
Speaker 1: back in the old days, they just discharge you, Yeah,
Speaker 1: wasting time on a trial. Right, what about gay suicide Pact? No, no,
Speaker 1: I haven't and we're going to leave that alone because
Speaker 1: that's not anywhere in here. But you just made it
Speaker 1: up for fun. No, he just pulled it from a
Speaker 1: different one, you know. Oh, that's you're looking at the
Speaker 1: wrong TPS form that was on the other one from
Speaker 1: last week. Okay, so that is the end of the
Speaker 1: he committed suicide theory. Let's now move into Craig Button
Speaker 1: was murdered theory. Yeah, because this one is well, this
Speaker 1: is interesting, is how I'm gonna put it. There's a
Speaker 1: gentleman by the name of William W. Warwick the Fourth.
Speaker 1: I read some of the stuff I have too. I've
Speaker 1: read a lot of his stuff actually, and he makes
Speaker 1: a lot of claims he's connected this story to some
Speaker 1: UFO sightings and he's he's jen really made a big
Speaker 1: stink on the internet about it. So here try to
Speaker 1: connect this to like nine eleven. Uh, you know, he
Speaker 1: may have and I probably just didn't go that far
Speaker 1: through his stuff. It's how you can do that. But
Speaker 1: you know, he's very creative in his ways. He is.
Speaker 1: He's a very creative man. So here is what Warwick says.
Speaker 1: On the thirteenth of March. A series of unexplained lights
Speaker 1: are seen in the night sky over Phoenix. That is
Speaker 1: what is commonly referred to as the Phoenix Lights, and
Speaker 1: it is a UFO citing. It is something that we
Speaker 1: may talk about in the future. So I'm just going
Speaker 1: to give the barest, simplest description of the event, which
Speaker 1: is that stationary lights were seen and described they were.
Speaker 1: They were first described as a pair, and then there
Speaker 1: was a third and then a fourth light, and then
Speaker 1: they went out, and then a new set of three lights.
Speaker 1: It appeared supposedly smaller lights were peeling off of them
Speaker 1: and then coming back to them. And then there was
Speaker 1: also a triangular formation of lights that were seen in
Speaker 1: the sky at a different time and a different location
Speaker 1: of Phoenix. So there's this whole thing, like the whole
Speaker 1: city is freaking out because they see lights in the sky.
Speaker 1: That is the simplest version of the Phoenix Lights. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean I've read a little bit about the
Speaker 1: Phoenix Lights. But actually it wasn't like everybody in the
Speaker 1: city saw these things, right, No, but a lot of
Speaker 1: people reported it, A lot of people. But I mean
Speaker 1: out of the population of Phoenix, really a tiny percentage
Speaker 1: actually reported it, right. I don't I can't answer that.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Joe. I didn't do but the basest
Speaker 1: looking into the Phoenix light because I was really focused
Speaker 1: on what this guy's theory was for this. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to cover the Phoenix Lights that way. We have
Speaker 1: it open to someday talk about it there, Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: So no spoilers from Joe, but I will because here's
Speaker 1: what the U. S. Air Force says. They said that
Speaker 1: they actually had a set of a tens flying a
Speaker 1: nighttime mission in the area at that time, and they're
Speaker 1: responsible for the stationary lights because what was happening is
Speaker 1: they were on a night time practice bombing run. But
Speaker 1: rather than dropping munitions or live munitions. Even more so,
Speaker 1: what they were doing instead is they were dropping flares. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes total sense. Well, if you think about flares
Speaker 1: from a far distance on a parachute floating through the sky,
Speaker 1: you could see how people would say, oh, well, that's weird.
Speaker 1: Is a stationary set of lights that's really strange. There's two,
Speaker 1: now there's three, now there's four. So this is This
Speaker 1: is the Air Forces description of the events where it
Speaker 1: claims that it is a complete and total cover story,
Speaker 1: and that the lights really are UFOs, and that the
Speaker 1: US Air Force is covering for some reason for the
Speaker 1: e t s that were there, because of course they are,
Speaker 1: because of course they are literally what the US Air
Speaker 1: Force does. And Button he uh, he was possibly a
Speaker 1: member of the flight crew that was covering or chasing
Speaker 1: the aliens. Mainly he makes his connection, I think because
Speaker 1: it was a tens and buttons and a ten pilot.
Speaker 1: But that's just my guess um. But Button, hearing all
Speaker 1: of this stuff four years later that's going on about
Speaker 1: the Phoenix lights, decides that he's gonna blow the whole
Speaker 1: thing wide open, and the U. S Air Force realizes
Speaker 1: that their only course of action is to kill him.
Speaker 1: Of course, of course, Well here's a great thing this is,
Speaker 1: this is how he He makes a lot of suppositions
Speaker 1: here and this is the one I like the best,
Speaker 1: which is they decide to simply remotely control his plane
Speaker 1: and fly it into the mountain side for him, thus
Speaker 1: silencing him during this this training run. So they make
Speaker 1: him do some weird behavior and then just fly away.
Speaker 1: They the US Air Force. Then, uh, they well, you know, actually,
Speaker 1: I guess this kind of goes in two different directions.
Speaker 1: They could have floated into the mountain in Colorado, or
Speaker 1: they could have just crashed his plane during the training mission.
Speaker 1: It would have been simpler because going on the Colorado
Speaker 1: is a joint pan of the butt. But then what
Speaker 1: they would do, remember we found a plane in Colorado
Speaker 1: that was an E ten. They would have taken wreckage
Speaker 1: from an A ten and deposited it onto the mountain
Speaker 1: side along with his body, and then later on quote
Speaker 1: unquote found it to then keep their whole story stitched
Speaker 1: together as a sound of you guys so far, well
Speaker 1: go ahead. I guess I would say, like the zombie
Speaker 1: plane theory makes a lot of sense to me. This
Speaker 1: is something that they talked about. We talked about a
Speaker 1: little bit maybe with MH three seventy where they are
Speaker 1: talking about with m H three seventy, know that they
Speaker 1: would have killed him and remote controlled the entire time
Speaker 1: from takeoff to land pilot controlled as piloted in the
Speaker 1: cockpit ever um, and that they would have done the
Speaker 1: whole mission so that the other people who were doing
Speaker 1: the mission could have corroborated the story that oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was totally in the air with us, and he
Speaker 1: was alive, and then he you know, went then he
Speaker 1: went off and did his own thing, and like who
Speaker 1: knows what happened, and that none of them would be
Speaker 1: in on it, but that the higher ups would go
Speaker 1: and crash them into the side of a mountain, the
Speaker 1: closest mountains they could find, which is probably about Colorado. Okay,
Speaker 1: the closest uninhabited mountains. You know, there's mountains. They are
Speaker 1: not the only hard surface on the planet, believe it
Speaker 1: or not. Turns out the planet itself is quite hard,
Speaker 1: and it turns out and it and it turns out
Speaker 1: for something like that. If you really need to kill him,
Speaker 1: you just have have your hitman stabbed him or strangle him,
Speaker 1: and in order to remote control the plane all the
Speaker 1: way to Colorado, you get agree with the controller and
Speaker 1: and you gotta have somebody who installs it on the plane.
Speaker 1: So there's there's a whole there's a whole thing that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a whole lot. And I have not heard of this.
Speaker 1: We are able to remotely control and a ten. You
Speaker 1: would think that you would not want to have that
Speaker 1: ability on a plane so that your enemy could not
Speaker 1: hijack your own plane against you. You're not going to
Speaker 1: lead that stuff just you know, and routinely installed. But
Speaker 1: that's my point is that in order to remote remotely
Speaker 1: control one, you'll have to have a whole team of
Speaker 1: guys develop all this stuff and install it on the
Speaker 1: plane just to take out one dude, Yeah yeah, or
Speaker 1: technically possibly take out two, as we're going to find out.
Speaker 1: Yeah maybe, But it would be a lot easier just
Speaker 1: to put put a bomb on the plane, very easy.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's detonated by an altimeter and you only
Speaker 1: need one assassin to do that. Are better still just
Speaker 1: murder I'm und parking lot somewhere and and that way
Speaker 1: you don't lose it's a random crime, Yeah you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't lose an expensive airframe. So we're all in
Speaker 1: agreement that this is kind of fetched in the farest
Speaker 1: forest reaches of the land, but I'm gonna keep going
Speaker 1: with it. It's it's that actually as absurd as as
Speaker 1: the idea that they killed him somewhere else and then
Speaker 1: it just got some random wreckage from an a tenants
Speaker 1: And well, let me let me, let me keep going
Speaker 1: with this, because this is where this goes. Is that
Speaker 1: Warwick again he is saying that, Okay, what's an obvious
Speaker 1: clue that they planted this thing there? Well, one of
Speaker 1: the things is is that the search helicopters when they
Speaker 1: were looking for him, they saw paper fluttering around on
Speaker 1: the mountain side, and that's how they figured out. And
Speaker 1: then they saw the metal and they figured out they
Speaker 1: were in the right spot. And he says, well, how
Speaker 1: can there be paper there when he he drove the
Speaker 1: plane into the mountain, and how would paper survive the
Speaker 1: obvious fireball that was gonna happen. Well, I guess more
Speaker 1: of my question is like, how would paper survive the
Speaker 1: you know, onslaught of it was a map supposedly was
Speaker 1: just gives his flight maps that were flo that were
Speaker 1: just enough blowing around and stuff I don't know that
Speaker 1: it had been snowing or or if it was just
Speaker 1: really cold, crappy conditions. But they said that there was
Speaker 1: paper flying around and it was supposedly a map. But
Speaker 1: if we keep going with this, they then say that
Speaker 1: because um, there's further evidence that this is going on,
Speaker 1: is that two weeks after he died or after his accident,
Speaker 1: he dies. Uh. There is a U. S Air Force
Speaker 1: captain named Amyba. I'm gonna hope that's how you pronounce
Speaker 1: her name. She died in a ten accident as well. Um,
Speaker 1: And according to him, and this is totally according to work.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen this anywhere else. She was his trainer
Speaker 1: when he was in Texas. So that's that's a This
Speaker 1: is a giant leap of faith that he is saying. Now,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of problems obviously, as we talked about,
Speaker 1: there's the whole remote controlling of a plane is really weird.
Speaker 1: And I also I also have to push back on
Speaker 1: the there would have been this giant fireball, so there
Speaker 1: shouldn't have been any paper because one of the things
Speaker 1: that you need to have for a giant fireball is
Speaker 1: a fuel source. When they did the math, they figured
Speaker 1: out that at the very most, when his A ten
Speaker 1: crashed into the side of gold Dust Peak, it had
Speaker 1: maybe five minutes of fuel left, if any. So this
Speaker 1: thing he was running on empty, which means when he
Speaker 1: went in there would have been some fire, but it
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been as if he went in with a
Speaker 1: full tank and it is a giant movie scene style
Speaker 1: explosion then incinerate everything. Yeah, things don't don't explode generally speaking,
Speaker 1: in like they do in the movies. But autopilot is
Speaker 1: a thing, right, Like the autopilot could have been switched on.
Speaker 1: It doesn't need to be remote control, like falling around
Speaker 1: could have been autopilot, and then he could have just
Speaker 1: run out of going into our next serio. Actually perfect,
Speaker 1: so let's let's let's go there because the next the
Speaker 1: next theory is that he was incapacitated and or it
Speaker 1: was an accident. So the theory goes that there there
Speaker 1: is talk that he suffered some kind of accident. We're
Speaker 1: pretty sure that it couldn't have been hypoxia because that
Speaker 1: should have shown up in his in his blood work
Speaker 1: as far as I understand it at least, But for
Speaker 1: some reason other than that, he was rendered unconscious and
Speaker 1: the plane was on autopilot almost the entire time. Now,
Speaker 1: that's kind of easy to discount because of the fact
Speaker 1: that at the last twenty minutes or whatever it was,
Speaker 1: he was seeing changing elevations, zig zagging back and forth,
Speaker 1: going through cloud formations like that doesn't that's not what
Speaker 1: an autopilot does. Autopilots don't shut off all your radio
Speaker 1: and exactly. That's also a very very good point. And
Speaker 1: if there was a problem, why wouldn't he have simply
Speaker 1: ejected the plane from the plane, Because by the way,
Speaker 1: when you eject the the it sends out a beacon.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a come fined me, rescue me kind
Speaker 1: of beacon automatically on purpose. So I seem to remember
Speaker 1: somewhere that pilots of the eight tens could shut that
Speaker 1: off so that the enemy couldn't find them. But I
Speaker 1: gets off the back of my head, I pull that.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly that would make sense. That does
Speaker 1: make sense. I'm pretty sure that you can. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: I mean this this whole he had some kind of
Speaker 1: accident that incapacitated him kind and then he flew on
Speaker 1: all up pilot till he suddenly woke up then crashed
Speaker 1: into the mountain. It makes me think of like something
Speaker 1: that would happen in the the epic chicken fight scene
Speaker 1: from Family Guy. Now, this is like one of those
Speaker 1: random things that they fall through and they hit a
Speaker 1: plane and you know, something happens. It's it's it's really
Speaker 1: out there and there isn't isn't actually any evidence to
Speaker 1: support that it was just some random, weirdo accident other
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know. I mean, I wanted to
Speaker 1: be just some random accid. I mean I wanted to
Speaker 1: be He was on autopilot and he came to and
Speaker 1: he realized he's out of fuel and he's trying to
Speaker 1: search for some place to land. But just nothing that
Speaker 1: really shows that's what he was doing. It doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense because, like we talked about, he could have
Speaker 1: turned everything back on to find somewhere to go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he could have decided to go rogue and everything and
Speaker 1: somehow got lost in the clouds and didn't realize there
Speaker 1: was a mountain in front of him. He could have
Speaker 1: misjudged his descent because like we said, he hit a
Speaker 1: hundred feet for the peak he would it could have
Speaker 1: been let's say he was out of fuel and he
Speaker 1: was just gliding. He may have thought I've got this,
Speaker 1: I've got this, I've got this. Oh crap, I don't
Speaker 1: got this. But then again again, why not punch out?
Speaker 1: Why not get out of the airplane at that point?
Speaker 1: So I don't know, it's really strange if he was
Speaker 1: if he actually was in clouds and didn't realize he
Speaker 1: was about to fly into a mountain, then boom. That's
Speaker 1: a good point. If he was gliding through cloud coover
Speaker 1: thinking he was safe. Yeah, and it could have been
Speaker 1: he needed to be a hundred feet to the right
Speaker 1: and the left or where he where he impacted. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's so that's the end of did he
Speaker 1: commit suicide? Was he killed? Was in an accident? Of those?
Speaker 1: I don't either to be gone. I've ping ponged all
Speaker 1: over the place on this. Yeah. Okay, So let's move
Speaker 1: on to mystery number two, which is what happened to
Speaker 1: the Mark eight twos. So the first theory of the
Speaker 1: Mark eight twos is that he did not actually drop them.
Speaker 1: Like I said, the US Air Force they scoured everywhere
Speaker 1: and they don't find him. Ground penetrating radar metal detectors.
Speaker 1: They're pretty sure that the weapons aren't armed. The reason
Speaker 1: I say I think that they believed there weren't armed
Speaker 1: is that if they had been armed, upon impact, they
Speaker 1: would have gone blue. And those that two thousand pounds
Speaker 1: of munitions would have made a very big impact. Five pounds,
Speaker 1: well yeah, five times four exactly. Sorry, I was doing math,
Speaker 1: I'm not. I don't. I'm not known for doing math.
Speaker 1: I'm not, I admit it. But yeah, So it's that
Speaker 1: that two thousand pounds of munitions would have made a
Speaker 1: big hole in the ground, and somebody would have reported
Speaker 1: that probably, well they should have seen that would have
Speaker 1: blown snow off the ground. I'm guessing, um now, And
Speaker 1: I went to the manufacturer's website because you can find
Speaker 1: this enough on the internet to look up what does
Speaker 1: the A two or they excuse me, the mark eight
Speaker 1: two do and it blows it? Yeah, they they're they're
Speaker 1: engineered to blow up. But they make a they make
Speaker 1: a crater that is anywhere from fifteen to thirty feet
Speaker 1: in diameter or five to ten and they make a
Speaker 1: crater that is anywhere from three to thirteen feet deep
Speaker 1: or one to four meters. So a single one makes
Speaker 1: that size hole. All four together should have made a
Speaker 1: really big hole. Um there. And now something I will
Speaker 1: bring up because this is something I thought about initially,
Speaker 1: was well, what if the bombs didn't go off initially,
Speaker 1: but then in the crash and the heat of the
Speaker 1: fire they went off. And that is something that can happen.
Speaker 1: There's a term, it's called uh cooking off, Yeah, cook off,
Speaker 1: and that is when an external heat source or thermal
Speaker 1: source effects ammunition to the point that it sets it off.
Speaker 1: It makes it explode like you know, it falls into
Speaker 1: the burning hull of a ship, and that which happens
Speaker 1: in enaval accidents, and eventually the fire causes those to
Speaker 1: go off, which is then a whole series of problems. Well,
Speaker 1: you would think that except like we talked about, he
Speaker 1: had almost no fuel on left on the plane, so
Speaker 1: there wouldn't have been enough heat to cause cook off
Speaker 1: because these things are rated for two and a half
Speaker 1: minutes of high temperatures. So well. Plus also the bombs
Speaker 1: should have been torn off the wings when he hit
Speaker 1: right right, and those you know what are you what
Speaker 1: are we calling them? The clamps? Clamps? Yeah, the clamps,
Speaker 1: the clamps. Clamps would have obviously been destroyed, should have
Speaker 1: been destroyed. There should have been evidence of the explosives
Speaker 1: in terms of residual chemicals, should have been should have
Speaker 1: been obvious when they analyzed the parts. Yep, none of
Speaker 1: that was around. There should have been trapnel mile or
Speaker 1: so away, but closer to Yes, So there's there's all
Speaker 1: these things that should would indicate if they had gone off,
Speaker 1: and none of that indicates that that was the case.
Speaker 1: And or and if they hadn't gone off, they should
Speaker 1: have just been laying in the wreckage. So that means
Speaker 1: that they didn't drop them. Theory is kind of on
Speaker 1: shake ground. So we're now going to go into he
Speaker 1: did drop though. I read a really interesting article which
Speaker 1: pointed out really good thing that I had not thought
Speaker 1: of at all, which is the effect of that two
Speaker 1: thousand pounds of munitions on his fuel. Well that's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it's the drag is going to cause is gonna
Speaker 1: you know, cost him fuel, and he probably could not
Speaker 1: have made it nearly as far as he did had
Speaker 1: those weapons been on board the whole time. Now, he
Speaker 1: only traveled about right you know when I when I
Speaker 1: tracked it, I had it at six hundred fifty, but
Speaker 1: I've seen it called eight hundred miles, so we're just
Speaker 1: gonna stick with eight hundred miles. So, yes, he traveled
Speaker 1: about eight hundred miles total, which is I mean the rain.
Speaker 1: We were looking this up earlier. The range of a
Speaker 1: fully fueled board hog is something like twenty five hundred miles,
Speaker 1: so he obviously wasn't full of fuel when he went
Speaker 1: down or when he started the journey. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: likely answer here then, based on that fuel consumption issue,
Speaker 1: is that he must have dropped them. And these folks
Speaker 1: really point out they make a good argument, which is
Speaker 1: that he probably dropped them right away because he was
Speaker 1: in an area that was known for being a practice range.
Speaker 1: So it's entirely possible that he could have dropped them unarmed.
Speaker 1: Let's say he dropped them unarmed and they fall into
Speaker 1: this this firing range. They could have been buried by
Speaker 1: subsequent explosions from other bombs that are dropped in practice runs,
Speaker 1: or maybe they were hit a direct hit set them off.
Speaker 1: I know, the chances that are really minute, but it's
Speaker 1: something that could have happened, but you wouldn't and if
Speaker 1: they were live, good luck discovering that crater from the
Speaker 1: eight thousand craters that are next to it. This is
Speaker 1: obviously from Craig Button Light. Yeah. They also the other
Speaker 1: thing too is you know these things have fans. They're
Speaker 1: gonna they're gonna go in kind of like they go
Speaker 1: down and they have a sharpol nose on him. They
Speaker 1: could just bury themselves in the ground. They could actually.
Speaker 1: Have you guys seen the did you ever do any
Speaker 1: looking at the fins that are available for these things?
Speaker 1: They what is it the snake guy? Is that the
Speaker 1: one that they called they have that is it's just weird.
Speaker 1: It's his fin that you know, you think of fins
Speaker 1: on a missile and there their upright and it you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of guides it. Well, this is actually they're
Speaker 1: a parachuting fin and they create drag, they flare out
Speaker 1: and wind pushes them. It slows the bomb down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not exactly a parachute, but yet and there's this
Speaker 1: four of them and they're just you know the same
Speaker 1: place that the fins would be. They slow it down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so it was really interesting. But that that is
Speaker 1: one thing. If if it was if the Mark eight
Speaker 1: twos were equipped with something like that, I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: as willing to say maybe they nosed it and buried themselves,
Speaker 1: because those fins are meant to slow them down. I
Speaker 1: didn't see any mention that they had that special kind
Speaker 1: of They didn't mention anything in the reporting of what
Speaker 1: these things were equippedment there than they were the basic
Speaker 1: market E two. Yeah, well, I mean it seems like
Speaker 1: that's what you would train with, right, you train with
Speaker 1: the cheapest Oh yeah, you don't pet the fancy things
Speaker 1: on there. We're gonna give you the fully decked out
Speaker 1: rig the first time. Good luck. Well there, yeah, the
Speaker 1: whole the snake as if I can't remember, pretty sure
Speaker 1: that's what it was. But yeah, the fins really really
Speaker 1: low altitude. They are in slow and slow movements because
Speaker 1: the idea for everybody that's listening the idea here is
Speaker 1: that if this finn is not there, the bomb will
Speaker 1: drop and strike the target fast enough that it will
Speaker 1: throw shrapnel back up into the plane that actually dropped it.
Speaker 1: So that's why they're slowing it down to give the
Speaker 1: plane time to get away exactly. And it's low air speed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he was only into his training course for what
Speaker 1: two months? Two months, so he's probably was, and this
Speaker 1: was his first live AMMO run. He wasn't running though level,
Speaker 1: so which means that they should have had enough speed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Possibly in a very till old up gunnery range, the
Speaker 1: things could have very easily buried themselves. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: explain why then they would say that it didn't look
Speaker 1: like the racks had been disengaged. So I don't know.
Speaker 1: The more credible sources I've seen and say that their
Speaker 1: acts looks like the bombs have been dropped, and I
Speaker 1: would believe that, But the racks not being disengaged idea
Speaker 1: leads us into our last sub theory of what happened
Speaker 1: to the market E two's, and that is the he
Speaker 1: sold them or gave him away theory. And you will
Speaker 1: see this out there occasionally, and this is one of
Speaker 1: those theories that gets bandied about, and when it comes up,
Speaker 1: it's usually followed by that person the name of that
Speaker 1: person's favorite terrorist organization, and the theory basically goes Craig Button,
Speaker 1: he flies somewhere, he lands, they unload the bombs, and
Speaker 1: then he takes off. Okay, why he then takes off
Speaker 1: and flies into a mountain. Well, maybe he wasn't actually
Speaker 1: on the plane. Maybe he did actually punch out and
Speaker 1: he had a dead body in the cockpit, or maybe
Speaker 1: he you know, it was a pig or a decoy
Speaker 1: or something like that. You know, so he got away
Speaker 1: all a dB Cooper. But you know, you would think, well,
Speaker 1: the US Air Force should know that, a the freaking
Speaker 1: the the ejection seat is gone and this is a pig.
Speaker 1: But then again, hell, if we're gonna keep going this way,
Speaker 1: maybe they're in on it. And so they're covering the
Speaker 1: whole thing up, which adds even more layers of absurd
Speaker 1: complexity to this whole story. Well, you know, the cockpits
Speaker 1: and these things are not exactly really exactly, and and
Speaker 1: also smuggling and corpse across the airfield climbing into the
Speaker 1: plane with it. You know, what nobody knows in it.
Speaker 1: What I was getting at is that if he when
Speaker 1: he stopped at his clandestined, that's when they loaded the
Speaker 1: extra corps. And well, you know, maybe he did some
Speaker 1: fancy mcgiver wizzywig stuff with a computer and we took
Speaker 1: off on autopilot by itself. And then the pig woke up,
Speaker 1: and the pig was steering in the plane and That's
Speaker 1: why it went back and forth, because Cuber Wilber Wilbur
Speaker 1: realized that there was a problem. Yeah, I guess that
Speaker 1: was kind of the reason I was asking, like, was
Speaker 1: he an exceptionally talented pilot? It was it possible that
Speaker 1: the air Force was looking to do something kind of
Speaker 1: clandestine and they didn't They were looking for somebody to
Speaker 1: and he was tapped for that, and he's tapped for that,
Speaker 1: and they said, we're gonna pay a bunch of money,
Speaker 1: just get out of here. I don't think it's likely,
Speaker 1: but you know, that was I guess why I was
Speaker 1: kind of asking the bombed like a cannabis farmer or
Speaker 1: something like well, or just you know, they were or
Speaker 1: they were trying to sell these munitions or whatever, that
Speaker 1: he flew some black black opposite of Black Book operation
Speaker 1: of some kind. Yeah, it seems really unlikely, but literally
Speaker 1: everything in this entire story seems super unlikely. So I
Speaker 1: guess I'm willing just as willing to say. You know,
Speaker 1: my my UFO theory is that he was abducted by
Speaker 1: aliens and they stole communitions because they wanted to investigate
Speaker 1: what humans were capable of, and then they dropped him
Speaker 1: back into airspace, and suddenly he was like, I don't
Speaker 1: know where I am. I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1: I just got abducted by aliens into the side of
Speaker 1: the mountain. Well, if if we're gonna go with that,
Speaker 1: then he should also be shutting. Why is this big
Speaker 1: chicken punching me? Because that's just as likely. Well, they're all, yeah,
Speaker 1: I really, well, actually there's another possibility. Okay, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean maybe he maybe he took something like you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to don't laugh. There's always ergo er good,
Speaker 1: of course, but also it was also you could have
Speaker 1: eaten some mushrooms not realizing that there was that there
Speaker 1: were the special kind, you know, or something like that,
Speaker 1: or somebody's loiked them some LSD. It's always kinds of weird.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's right that could cause using that is
Speaker 1: that is not outside the realm of possibility evidence, of course,
Speaker 1: And of course they didn't find anything those blood streams,
Speaker 1: so that's the hard part. In fairness, though it doesn't
Speaker 1: always take drugs to have a psychotic break. He could
Speaker 1: have had a psychotic break. It's true. He could have
Speaker 1: thought that he was being chased. That's why could have
Speaker 1: been hallucinating in some way, shape or form doing these
Speaker 1: evasive maneuvers and through the clouds and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't explain where the bombs went or anything.
Speaker 1: So yeah, maybe the bombs will turn up. I mean
Speaker 1: they scoured those lakes, every lake around there. For example,
Speaker 1: that would have been a logical place for him to
Speaker 1: drop the bombs lake It totally would have the most
Speaker 1: most lakes and places like that. Couldn't have very salty bottoms.
Speaker 1: They could, they could vary. It took him a long
Speaker 1: time to get around the searching those things. But they were,
Speaker 1: it wasn't I mean they were. They had divers, they
Speaker 1: were using equipment, you know, metal detectors and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: You think that they would have found them, and I
Speaker 1: know detectors, they metal detector I know that they were
Speaker 1: using metal detectors. And I remember seeing images of guys
Speaker 1: walking through water and they had these weird handle contraptions,
Speaker 1: part of which we're in the water because they were
Speaker 1: doing the searching, which I believe was some sort of
Speaker 1: radar or metal detecting device. I don't remember now that
Speaker 1: you asked me. If you hadn't asked me, I probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to do it imprompted, but that's the
Speaker 1: way it always works. So yeah, I guess I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't have a good theory for either. I don't either,
Speaker 1: all right, I think he just went nuts. So it's
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a unanimous it's family guys, right, Yeah, Okay, Well,
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