DATE: Saturday, May 3, 1997                 TAG: 9705030499

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A4   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: TUCSON, ARIZ.                     LENGTH:   48 lines

AIR FORCE SUSPECTS PILOT COMMITTED SUICIDE OVER GAY AFFAIR, PAPER SAYS

The Air Force suspects the A-10 pilot whose plane crashed into a mountainside committed suicide for fear his homosexual affair with another flier was about to be exposed, the Tucson Citizen reported Friday. An Air Force spokesman called the story ``unsubstantiated.''

The newspaper quoted an unidentified military source close to the investigation who said Capt. Craig Button, 32, may have flown his attack jet into a 13,000-foot Colorado mountain because an estranged lover was about to reveal the affair.

The source said the lover was believed to be another pilot at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson.

``The Air Force really believes that this could be the answer,'' the source told the newspaper.

``That's unsubstantiated,'' said Col. Joe LaMarca, spokesman for the Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton.

LaMarca said the Air Force decided only Wednesday to convene an accident investigation board that will look at all aspects of the case, including Button's personal life.

The newspaper has made ``some very clear assumptions or accusations of a military investigator close to the source,'' LaMarca said. ``I'm here to tell you that the board just convened, and I'm not even sure whether all the investigators are out there yet.''

If Button, who was single, had been found to be homosexual, he could have faced discharge. The Pentagon deems homosexuality incompatible with military service.

The Air Force Office of Special Investigations, which investigates undetermined deaths of Air Force personnel, is conducting its own inquiry.

``We're not discounting anything and dismissing any possibilities at this point,'' said Capt. Steve Murray, an OSI spokesman in Washington.

Button veered off course from a three-plane formation in southwestern Arizona on April 2, eventually crashing near Vail, Colo.

In 1992, the Navy was obliged to apologize for initially saying a suicidal, homosexual sailor was to blame for the 1989 explosion that killed him and 46 shipmates on the battleship Iowa. The Navy said its investigation found there was no proof the sailor was to blame. ILLUSTRATION: A military source's comments about Capt. Craig Button

are unsubstantiated, said an Air Force spokesman. KEYWORDS: ACCIDENT MILITARY ACCIDENT PLANE FATALITY

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