U.S. Air Force's stealth fighters making final flights - AP

[Yrys]

Air Force's stealth fighters making final flights

DAYTON, Ohio (AP) -- The world's first attack aircraft to employ stealth technology is slipping quietly into history.

Technicians service an F-117 stealth fighter after it arrived at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, on Monday. The inky black, angular,
radar-evading F-117, which spent 27 years in the Air Force arsenal secretly patrolling hostile skies from Serbia to Iraq, will be put in mothballs next
month in Nevada.

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, which manages the F-117 program, will have an informal, private retirement ceremony Tuesday
with military leaders, base employees and representatives from Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. The last F-117s scheduled to fly will leave
Holloman on April 21, stop in Palmdale, California, for another retirement ceremony, then arrive on April 22 at their final destination: Tonopah Test
Range Airfield in Nevada, where the jet made its first flight in 1981.

The government has no plans to bring the fighter out of retirement, but could do so if necessary. "I'm happy to hear they are putting it in a place where
they could bring it back if they ever needed it," said Brig. Gen. Gregory Feest, the first person to fly an F-117 in combat, during the 1989 invasion of Panama
that led to the capture of dictator Manuel Noriega. The Air Force decided to accelerate the retirement of the F-117s to free up money to modernize the rest
of the fleet. The F-117 is being replaced by the F-22 Raptor, which also has stealth technology.

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Fifty-nine F-117s were made; 10 were retired in December 2006 and 27 since then, the Air Force said. Seven of the planes have crashed, one in Serbia
in 1999. Stealth technology used on the F-117 was developed in the 1970s to help evade enemy radar. While not invisible to radar, the F-117's shape and
coating greatly reduced its detection. The F-117, a single-seat aircraft, was designed to fly into heavily defended areas undetected and drop its payloads
with surgical precision.

A total of 558 pilots have flown the F-117 since it went operational. They dub themselves "bandits," with each given a "bandit number" after their first flight.
Feest, who is Bandit 261, also led the first stealth fighter mission into Iraq during Desert Storm in 1991. He said the fire from surface-to-air missiles and
anti-aircraft guns was so intense that he stopped looking at it to try to ease his fears. "We knew stealth worked and it would take a lucky shot to hit us,
but we knew a lucky shot could hit us at any time," he said.

Incredibly, not one stealth was hit during those missions, he said.

Article on link

 

[Mike Baker]

LINK


DAYTON, Ohio (AP) -- The world's first attack aircraft to employ stealth technology is slipping quietly into history.

The inky black, angular, radar-evading F-117, which spent 27 years in the Air Force arsenal secretly patrolling hostile skies from Serbia to Iraq, will be put in mothballs next month in Nevada.

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, which manages the F-117 program, will have an informal, private retirement ceremony Tuesday with military leaders, base employees and representatives from Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

The last F-117s scheduled to fly will leave Holloman on April 21, stop in Palmdale, California, for another retirement ceremony, then arrive on April 22 at their final destination: Tonopah Test Range Airfield in Nevada, where the jet made its first flight in 1981.

The government has no plans to bring the fighter out of retirement, but could do so if necessary.

"I'm happy to hear they are putting it in a place where they could bring it back if they ever needed it," said Brig. Gen. Gregory Feest, the first person to fly an F-117 in combat, during the 1989 invasion of Panama that led to the capture of dictator Manuel Noriega.

The Air Force decided to accelerate the retirement of the F-117s to free up money to modernize the rest of the fleet. The F-117 is being replaced by the F-22 Raptor, which also has stealth technology.

Fifty-nine F-117s were made; 10 were retired in December 2006 and 27 since then, the Air Force said. Seven of the planes have crashed, one in Serbia in 1999.

Stealth technology used on the F-117 was developed in the 1970s to help evade enemy radar. While not invisible to radar, the F-117's shape and coating greatly reduced its detection.

The F-117, a single-seat aircraft, was designed to fly into heavily defended areas undetected and drop its payloads with surgical precision.

A total of 558 pilots have flown the F-117 since it went operational. They dub themselves "bandits," with each given a "bandit number" after their first flight.

Feest, who is Bandit 261, also led the first stealth fighter mission into Iraq during Desert Storm in 1991. He said the fire from surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns was so intense that he stopped looking at it to try to ease his fears.

"We knew stealth worked and it would take a lucky shot to hit us, but we knew a lucky shot could hit us at any time," he said.

Incredibly, not one stealth was hit during those missions, he said.

 

[Mike Baker]

Whoops, theres another one....Mods can you merge them please?

 

[Yrys]

The other one is at :

U.S. Air Force's stealth fighters making final flights - AP


Mike, as I know you have sense of humour :

The Vagueness of PMs to Mods

    ;D

 

[MarkOttawa]

Going quietly into that good night:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-stealth22apr22,0,1080813.story?track=ntothtml

They were born shrouded in mystery in a windowless building in Burbank. They flew combat missions over Serbia and Iraq virtually invisible to enemy radar. And today, the black, bat-like F-117A Night Hawks will fly quietly into the night as stealthily as they came.

The last four of the world's first stealth fighters will make their final flights from Palmdale to a secret desert base in Nevada, where they will be locked up indefinitely in a secure concrete hangar.

But unlike the passing of other notable planes, there will be no public fanfare or farewell for these mysterious aircraft that revolutionized aerial warfare. The F-117 is still so cloaked in secrecy that only employees and retirees who worked on the program can attend its retirement ceremony at Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Skunk Works plant in Palmdale. A few aerospace reporters have been invited, but they had to be U.S. citizens.

"Some aspects of the plane are still classified," said Dianne Knippel, spokeswoman for Lockheed, whose legendary Skunk Works design house, formerly in Burbank and now in Palmdale, developed and built the aircraft.

The hushed send-off is no surprise to aviation buffs and historians who have followed one of the nation's most secretive aircraft programs since the Pentagon covertly launched it more than 30 years ago.

"It reflects a hyper-security culture that has accompanied this thing since the beginning," said John Pike, a defense policy analyst with . "It's the nation's first stealth technology, and as a result you might imagine all the caution with security."..

Mark
Ottawa