F-117A Nighthawk lands for last time [with photo]

PALMDALE - The once top-secret Blackbirds on display in Palmdale have a new nest mate: the F-117A Nighthawk, also known as the stealth fighter. The dart-shaped aircraft, the fourth of its kind built and used solely for testing, was moved into display position Monday at Blackbird Airpark, taking its place beside other former "black" aircraft, the SR-71 and U-2.

"Look at how many black airplanes you can come see right here," said Fred Johnsen , curator of the Air Force Flight Test Center Museum, of which Blackbird Airpark is a satellite.

Escorted by members of the 410th Flight Test Squadron, the aircraft's home for its flying lifetime, the F-117 was towed from the squadron's facility at Air Force Plant 42 across the field to the airpark, at 25th Street East and Avenue P.

The move required coordination with Plant 42 officials, including the removal of parts of a couple of fences to get the aircraft securely within the airpark.

Once at the airpark, the plane was secured to a cement pad prepared in recent months for its arrival.

After the aircraft was retired March 28 , members of the 410th Flight Test Squadron volunteered to prepare it for public display.

The refurbishment took seven months, said Chief Master Sgt. Dave Johnson of the 410th.

Volunteers, from the squadron commander on down, worked on the extensive project, led by Tech. Sgt. Jeff Kent and Tech. Sgt. Bill Ball.

The aircraft was carefully stripped of its military hardware, including large portions which still are considered classified, and refurbished to its original appearance.

They removed such hardware as the engines, tailpipes, radar-absorbing material on the skin, much of the nose and even the glass from the cockpit, Fred Johnsen said.

"we accidently blew the @#!# out of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade..."

Nato bombed Chinese deliberately
The Observer, Sunday October 17 1999

"Nato deliberately bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the war in Kosovo after discovering it was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications."

"According to senior military and intelligence sources in Europe and the US the Chinese embassy was removed from a prohibited targets list after Nato electronic intelligence (Elint) detected it sending army signals to Milosevic's forces."

"The story is confirmed in detail by three other Nato officers - a flight controller operating in Naples, an intelligence officer monitoring Yugoslav radio traffic from Macedonia and a senior headquarters officer in Brussels. They all confirm that they knew in April that the Chinese embassy was acting as a 'rebro' [rebroadcast] station for the Yugoslav army (VJ) after alliance jets had successfully silenced Milosevic's own transmitters."

"The Chinese were also suspected of monitoring the cruise missile attacks on Belgrade, with a view to developing effective counter-measures against US missiles."

"The intelligence officer, who was based in Macedonia during the bombing, said: 'Nato had been hunting the radio transmitters in Belgrade. When the President's [Milosevic's] residence was bombed on 23 April, the signals disappeared for 24 hours. When they came on the air again, we discovered they came from the embassy compound.' The success of previous strikes had forced the VJ to use Milosevic's residence as a rebroadcast station. After that was knocked out, it was moved to the Chinese embassy. The air controller said: 'The Chinese embassy had an electronic profile, which Nato located and pinpointed.'"

"...The Chinese military attache, Ven Bo Koy, who was seriously wounded in the attack and is now in hospital in China, told Dusan Janjic, the respected president of Forum for Ethnic Relations in Belgrade, only hours before the attack, that the embassy was monitoring incoming cruise missiles in order to develop counter-measures..."

If one of the F-117’s replacements, ever somehow are lost over hostile airspace, hope they nuke the wreckage.

I know planning for taking second place in any contest isn’t nearly as inspiring as taking first - but it still should be planned out and prepared for.

Like that plane which was forced down in southern China.

It just sat there. Half full of goodies, for the PLA to methodically dismantle and study.

I suspect that there was a hidden flaw in the aircraft that only became known once they had built a few.

From my limited knowledge, the concept was revolutionary, but the implementation was limited first by the computer power to model and design the aircraft, and by a lack of experience with the new materials. It looks like something a 3d game designer would come up with to represent an aircraft on an older pc platform in order to reduce the polygon count the cpu had to process. And it looks that way for exactly that reason, the computers of the 70's simply couldn't handle modelling an entire surface of an aircraft, so the aircraft had to be "simplified." Time and cpu improvements fixed that. Experience with the materials and turnng them into complex shapes was the other key. So now we can make aircraft like the F-22.

Go on the internet and look up the the “TR3-B. When the former CEO of Lockhead is telling people we are “fifty years” ahead of everyone else, it can only mean one thing;

Those big black flying triangles, seen all over the world, are for real, and they are carrying some pretty wild technology. Can you say Gravity Distortion Vehicle.

Have fun.

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