I love the military aviation discussions here. Those discussions, with the membership, have created a whole new personal passion for information.

We have so many knowledgeable members. Those who are historians, (professional or enthusiast), or directly involved, be it in the engineering, maintnence, use, or application of the craft. I consider it a gift of 'inside information' to a fascinating world we all admire, but know little about.

So...I am a child of the 90s. Born in 83, Desert Storm was a huge deal to me.  I can remember being 8-10 years old and "knowing" no one can run with the US because of the "Stealth Fighter". (We all know it was no fighter, but a bomber. Popular lore is that it was given the F designation simply for public acceptance). In elementary school I, along with most other kids had at least one Nighthawk shirt. Hell, you'd see at least two grown men wearing Nighthawk shirts in the local grocery store each week when Mom drug you along.

What am asking here, is tell me more.  Any documentary will tell you it was fantastic, and I believe it was. Reality tells me, just like Serbia incident, that there is more to the story.  It was the publics introduction to Stealth, and 'we' all lived that. But, was it a successful campaign aircraft, or more a morale booster or test bed?

Discuss. Tell me more about the plane that captivated my elementary years.

Loud as fuck.

Tag for smart people, but I believe it first flew in 1979, and was originally called "Have Blue."   It's probably what lead to a lot of "triangular" UFO sightings in the Nevada and California skies.

That's the shit I'm talking about. That makes sense. As far as I knew first flight was around 86, but that is from regular old documentary shows..I can see 79 being reasonable for proof of concept type stuff.
Thanks

I used to hear them at night in New Mexico all the time.  The sound is a little different than other planes, so it made it a little harder to spot where they were at against the starry background.

Cool to see them though.

As a hotroder that gives me a geek-boner.

Read this book

http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/dp/0316743003

Well, I was wrong.


1977.


Also, buy this.  It pretty much covers everything awesome cold-war black airplane's development.

Have Blue first flight was December 1 1977.  I knew guys who were "sucked into the black hole" back in 1983 as the production aircraft were being fielded and support technicians were being assigned to the project.

It's a badass jet. I was young during the first Gulf War but I remember thinking how cool it was we actually had stealth planes.

Obviously you have never heard an F-105 with its burner at max power

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My understanding was that the shoot-down was due to some lazy planning and flying the same flight path night after night giving the A-A radar operator night after night to tune his radar to figure out what kind of return it was giving then fire at it.

This thread is going exactly as I hoped...the amazon up sales of the kelly Johnson and Gene Kranz books are two books I never knew existed.

Good stuff.

That's makes sense. Pilot interviews I've seen say they always flew on pre plotted course and they became, basically, weapons officers when they drew near the target area.

Add F4's and/or F111's at 100%...!

Groom lake 81.. I thought the camo scheme was badass

Both those are great reads also!

I was in Kamloops BC for an airshow and visiting friends before the airshow got underway.
The US was kind enough to send an F-117 to be on static display.
I do not think the pilot of the F-117 really wanted to show off his aircraft while standing around answering questions in the heat.

But he sure as HELL buzzed the town with low level passes around 300FT AGL for 20 minutes of so.
It was amazing seeing that aircraft flying in and out of the valley and very impressive how nimble it was.

The pilot seemed to be wringing out the aircraft outside of airport parameters, and yes, it was very loud.

I will never forget the first and only time I have seen one flying.

I knew a guy who flew them as a test pilot in the 80s before they went public.



I remember him saying that he would fly his A-7 from Pittsburgh out to wherever they would fly for a few weeks at a time.



He did tell me a story about having to eject out of his A-7 once, and years after I lost contact with him, I found this Wiki article which documents the incident in which he ejected.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_Indianapolis_Ramada_Inn_A-7D_Corsair_II_crash

I took the family to the Edwards AFB air show sometime in the mid to late 80s.  We were walking down the flight line looking at all the neat stuff.  Just happened to stop at point that had a small area roped off, but open to the flight line.  About that time they announced the f117 would be doing a first ever (i think) public flight demonstration.   It was awesome.   Before long it landed and taxied down the flight line so everyone could get a good look, and taxied into the small roped off area we had stopped at to watch the flight demonstration.   It was really a sight to see.

High Definition doppler weather radar can detect the air turbulence generated by air craft.

That plane made me buy Jane's USAF computer game.

Born in '84 for reference.

The signature that Columbia painted over Texas was unfortunately graphic but amazing as well.

God bless the crew of Columbia.

It was a very interesting doctrinal procurement model.

No idea why it was given a Fighter designation. Anyone?

My HS physics and chemistry teacher worked on the project and then later at Tonapah.  He had some awesome stories about the designing and construction of the plane that he worked into relevant classroom examples.  He was an awesome teacher, and actually won a Milliken Educator Award the same year I had him.

The USAF did a video after the Gulf War called "We Own the Night", IIRC.  We were never really sure how involved with the F-117 he actually was until we got to his part in the video.  

I believe it was a procurement issue.

Fighter, bomber, recon...what designation was tagged to it is beyond my knowledge.

The story from the guy I mentioned above was that it was easier to get pilots to sign on to fly a fighter rather than a bomber.

No idea how true that actually is.

It's the "buy whatever the fuck cool stuff you want to for the flying club" doctrine.

We spent billions to develop new technology, then wasted it on Saddam and Kosovo.

Epic boondoggle.

Only slightly more useful than women in the infantry.

We came close to losing one much earlier, when one of the pilots in the fighter squadron I was in launched a missile on the opening night at a Yugoslavian fighter.  He didn't know there was an F-117 almost directly between him and his target, the missile ended up going by just a little above the F-117's canopy.





 

Back in the 80's I was a kid in Hawthorne, NV. Place is surrounded by a huge early cold-war-era weapons depot (Navy then Army), tons of military land and facilities. The town is just a mile square of little houses in a hot, dusty place. People either work on the Base, at nearby mines, local community services, or collect a check in some....other fashion. I was an aircraft buff from day one like any other American kid, and did enough traveling around the state with my pops to see a lot of military stuff in action.

Some time around, oh, maybe '83-'85 window, a small USAF contingent showed up in town and had a small compound in Babbitt (enlisted/worker town, no longer extant) that consisted of a few white trailers and antenna arrays. The Base always had various "odd" military members using various bits of the facilities, so this wasn't a big deal. The personnel were radar techies and the like, and became members of the local community for a few years. One of them, "Mr. B", came to our church and even helped out with the little private school there. He brought a few of us through the radar trailers on a school field trip, totally awesome green tubed gear. Just a regular guy.

I paid attention to anything that flew - in that kind of isolated town you had to have interests or else risk running amok with your life. Around '85 or so, I started seeing a single aircraft fly over town at night east-west at a mid-elevation (probably ~5000-7000 AGL thinking back). Nothing obviously out of the ordinary, clearly military but not a super-fast mover like the guys out of Fallon. A couple of wingtip lights and a center red strobe IIRC. I slept outside a lot, so I'd see it frequently. In 1988 this thing started flying over town in the daytime, with a white T-38 chase in fairly close formation. Looked like an arrowhead, and was obviously a bit larger than the T-38. It was really exciting, and I can remember sketching it after I saw it the first time. Well, within a couple weeks it was making regular appearances and I started keeping track. I had a local sectional chart (to go with the hanging plastic models, balsa flyers, posters, and constant begging the local CAP guys to let me join as a cadet early), and it was easy work with a watch and compass to get times and flight paths plotted. Within a couple more weeks I had a daily schedule worked up with the flight path variations within visual range. It got to the point where I could say when and where the thing would appear, and where it would exit visual.

Some time (months, maybe) went by, but I distinctly remember running into "Mr. B" one morning while I was out delivering my papers and he was jogging around the town perimeter.
"He's USAF," I thought. "He'll be just as excited about this strange aircraft as I am!"
When I proceeded to lay it all out to Mr. B, and show him my little folded up schedule in my pocket, he seemed amused but not particularly engaged on the topic. I just could not understand why he wasn't all jazzed about it. I mean, this was an epic adventure for an 11 year old kid stuck in a desert town 2.5 hours away from the nearest shopping mall. Mr. B never brought it up again, and we ended up moving away a little over two years later. It wasn't long after that, however, that the T-38 started getting dropped from the flights, and the pattern become completely random. After a year or so of this, I stopped seeing it, and pretty soon the Testor's 1:32 scale model was hanging in my room along with every scrap of info I could get on Groom Lake. The USAF group ended up leaving soon as well, but I don't remember the timing exactly on that. Pretty sure at this point that their sole purpose was a test node for the program.

Now there is just sand and desert shrubs where the compound and white trailers were, and hopefully some other kid is running my paper route and dreaming of a larger world.  

My ex used to tell me that the F-117 shootdown was the one of the proudest moments back in her country

well written! The  "voice" in your writing,  is impeccable .

I've always been amused that the prototypes for one of the most secret military programs were built in the middle of Los Angeles right under the nose of all the movie and TV studios.

I was born so late in the 80s that the 117 was public when I popped out and I vaguely remember us kicking the shit out of Iraq being shown on TV.

I do remember seeing it in the Gulf War scenario in Falcon 3.0 and being a little awestruck by the Idea of making a jet that could just cruise right in under someone's nose and blow stuff up.

By the time of the Bosnian conflict I knew it wasn't totally invisible and I remember hearing a bunch of stupid shit on the TV about what the shoot down meant and thinking constantly there was more to the story.  Turns out there was.

Still think it was a fantastic aircraft for a conventional war and would have been a fantastic Wild Weasel aircraft with the right equipment and tactics.

Not a loud plane compared to others. It was designated a fighter because they could not fund it as a bomber.  Had to fire an A/A missile to get its fighter designation. Which burnt the RAM off the underside of the plane.  It was definitely a great plane and I had a lot of fun working on them.

Funny cause the theory used was developed by a Russian.



ETA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petr_Ufimtsev





 

Story I remember was to get around a treaty or the negotiations leading up to a signed treaty.  Something like that.

US and USSR had been working on the treaties to limit strategic arms and the US was not suppose to produce any more strategic bombers and that is how it could have been classified.  We were allowed to have more fighters however so...

Don't know if the story is accurate or not.

F-117A?

Never heard of it.

Ok... ok you win the thread

A little GBU-24 delivery.  

The guy that designed/managed the program also did a few other you may have heard of.  Kelly Johnson was involved with the F-117, P-38, Constellation, U-2, SR-71, et all.  

I can't comment with any personal knowledge, but this book is about the best thing out there if you are interested in the beginnings of our stealth program

I've heard that, and another version that congress said "no money for more bombers", thus the F designation. Similar to the Super Hornet. It's essentially a completely new aircraft, but it looks like a Hornet, and was sold as an "upgrade". Thus we "saved" money.

Fucking A. Merica!

Ever do this pose without the aircraft behind you?  



Cool pics, thanks for sharing.

Giving a "B" designation to an a/c that size--one whose material requirements for construction were no more than they were--would raise eyebrows that didn't need raising.  

I used to play that incessantly, first computer game I ever bought. I remember how long it would take.