In addition to the destruction of one subsonic tactical stealth strike aircraft F-117 Nighthawk Of the air force (air force) The United States in March 1999 in Yugoslavia, where another similar aircraft was damaged a month later. About confirmation of the second accident of this aircraft tells The Drive.
The American publication, referring to former f-117 Nighthawk pilot Charlie Heinlein, whose story can be heard in the afterburn podcast, writes that air missions of these aircraft requiring refueling took about six hours, of which it took 30-45 minutes to fly over the former Yugoslavia.
The internal compartments of the F-117 Nighthawk housed a pair of laser-guided bombs. The aircraft did not have their own means of detecting enemy air defense systems, as a result of which converted F-16 Fighting Falcon fighters were used to solve this problem.
On the night when the Serbs shot down the F-117 Nighthawk, there were two such aircraft in the sky over Yugoslavia at a distance of about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from each other. According to Heinlein, then the Serbs "used quite a lot of anti-aircraft artillery, and sometimes quite a lot of missiles." "I kind of looked to the right over Belgrade and saw this huge approaching rocket that looks like a Saturn V. I knew my other partner was out there somewhere. Then I see another launch — a large glow, and even from this distance you can see a lot of details. The plume, the outgoing smoke, and then this fireball approaching you, " the pilot said.
According to Heinlein, at the time, he could not understand whether a Serbian missile hit his partner's plane. According to the instructions, the pilot left the F-117 Nighthawk on autopilot, dropped a bomb on a given target and flew to the KC-135 Stratotanker air tanker. "His plane wasn't in good shape," Heinlein said of his partner's F — 117 Nighthawk, which subsequently headed for the tanker.
In July 2019, an F-117 Nighthawk was spotted over Death Valley, California, performing, according to Combat Aircraft, the role of an enemy aircraft simulator. At the same time, commenting on the material on Twitter, The Drive noted that in reality we may be talking about testing the system for suppressing infrared radiation by the aircraft body.
The American company Lockheed Martin in 1983-1990 produced 64 units of subsonic tactical aircraft F-117 Nighthawk of various modifications. In April 2008, the aircraft were decommissioned by the US air force. Since then, the F-117 Nighthawk has been repeatedly seen in tests, the goals of which were not disclosed by the military. Two such aircraft were shot down in Yugoslavia by the s-125 Pechora anti-aircraft missile system (the first plane crashed, the second managed to return to base).