/Pogled.info/ During the three-month bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, 1,150 NATO aircraft carried out 30,000 strikes, launched 1,300 cruise missiles, dropped 37,000 cluster bombs, destroyed 25,000 residential buildings and hundreds of kilometers of roads, killed a thousand soldiers and policemen, as well as about 4,000 civilians. But despite the complete military superiority of the enemy, the Yugoslav air defense at least once did what was considered impossible. This happened on March 27, 1999.
The first “stealth”
In the aviation that the Alliance uses for bombing, the F-117 Nighthawk stands apart. In the past, there was already the invasion of Panama, the war in the Persian Gulf – all attacks on Baghdad were carried out only by this aircraft, as well as Operation Desert Fox, which the USA and Great Britain conducted against Iraq in 1998 – as well as in Yugoslavia, without sanctions by the UN Security Council.
This machine, practically invulnerable to air defense, made a revolution in military aircraft construction: it was the F-117 that became the first aircraft created according to the concept of “stealth” and set the trend for decades to come.
Even for the manufacturer Lockheed, the project turned out to be fateful. In the 1970s, the company was in serious trouble, mired in debt and bribery scandals, and asked the government to provide a loan guarantee. Therefore, the race for the first stealth is the last hope to stay afloat. Four decades later, Lockheed Martin firmly tops the ranking of the largest companies in the global military-industrial complex.
It should be noted that Lockheed won the tender largely thanks to the Soviet physicist Pyotr Ufimtsev. The scientist’s work on how the shape of an aircraft affects the ability of radars to detect it, translated into English almost ten years after publication, is the basis of the F-117 project. This makes a strong impression on Pentagon officials. Ufimtsev’s ideas largely determined the futuristic design of Nighthawk.
Complete secrecy
Now we are used to the fact that advanced models of American weapons are actively advertised, but years pass before they enter service, and project budgets grow exponentially.
With the F-117, everything was different. The plane first flew into the sky in 1981, two years later it was put into service, but the very fact of its existence was recognized by the American authorities only in 1988, when the Pentagon published only one photo, and that retouched .
Even the very letter F in the name indicates special secrecy. Fighter names usually begin with this letter, although “Nighthawk” refers to bombers. To keep the true purpose of the new product a secret, it was delivered to fighter squadrons.
As a result, the US received a single-seat bomber capable of carrying up to 2.5 tons of combat cargo. The flight range without refueling is 1,720 kilometers. But speed had to be sacrificed: the F-117 was made subsonic for the sake of stealth. Before the bombing of Yugoslavia, not a single such aircraft had been shot down.
“Class A Incident”
This behemoth of its time, piloted by Desert Storm veteran Lt. Col. Dale Zelko, faces the 3rd Battery of the 250th Air Defense Missile Brigade under the command of Col. Zoltan Dani.
According to the American pilot, the weather conditions on March 27, 1999 did not allow escort aircraft to be sent together with the F-117, as is usually done.
Zoltan Dani’s battery is armed with the Soviet S-125 Neva complex, which was adopted almost 40 years earlier. The radar is provided by Soviet long-wave radars: P-12 “Enisei” and P-18 “Terek”. They manage to find the “invisible”, but there is one problem.
The fact is that the range of S-125 does not exceed 20-22 kilometers. And NATO has many aircraft capable of detecting emitting devices from much greater distances. And the F-117 itself has AGM-88 HARM anti-radar missiles with a range of up to 150 kilometers.
Because of this, the Yugoslav anti-aircraft guns have to act very carefully: the radar is switched on the air from one position no more than twice in short sessions of 20 seconds. As Zoltan Dani’s deputy, Lt. Col. Djorje Anicic, recalled, on March 27, Yugoslav troops deployed several radar simulators to lure NATO aircraft into a trap. That evening, three F-117s were dispatched to these decoys.
They appear on radar screens at 20:40. The group was spotted at a distance of 23 kilometers. The first two attempts fail to intercept the target. On the third time, the anti-aircraft guns fired two missiles at the plane, which was flying along azimuth 240. One of them managed to shoot down the bomber – an explosion went off near its left wing. The F-117 crashed near the village of Budzhanovtsi, 40 kilometers west of Belgrade. Zelko, for whom this is his 39th combat flight, ejected.
Seven hours later, he was found by a NATO search team. The pilot was taken to Aviano air base in Italy. The accident was immediately classified as Class A: the aircraft could not be recovered.
To avoid the wreckage of the F117 falling into the hands of the Yugoslav army, and then the Russians, they decided to launch an airstrike at the crash site. However, it turns out that CNN correspondents are already working there and the flight has been cancelled.
Now most of the remains of this F-117 are kept in the Aviation Museum in Serbia – there is a separate room dedicated to the anti-aircraft gunners who shot down the Nighthawk. Rightly so, because they were the ones who dispelled the myth of the invulnerability of “stealth”. Yugoslav authorities also claimed that other US aircraft were shot down, including F-2 strategic bombers. But only the crash near Budzhanovtsi was confirmed by the Americans themselves.
Translation: V. Sergeev
