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F-117A Final Flights - Yesterday (April 21st)

Tue Apr 22, 2008 3:43 pm

The F-117A's were retired yesterday with the final flight of four aircraft out of Holloman AFB. I guess that makes them warbirds now. They are supposed to be kept in indoor storage, with wings removed, at Tonopah. Anyone see any photos of this event?

Cheers,
Richard

Tue Apr 22, 2008 4:24 pm

No photos, I'm a foreigner so wasn't invited :P

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fi-stealth22apr22,1,4480873.story

From the Los Angeles Times
AEROSPACE
F-117 is leaving the same way it arrived -- stealthily
The Air Force and Lockheed Martin are giving a secret retirement send-off to the world's first radar-evading fighter.
By Peter Pae
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

April 22, 2008

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."

The single-seat F-117 was the first plane that could evade radar detection; it was designed to fly into heavily defended areas to knock out radar installations and anti-aircraft missile batteries, clearing the way for other fighters and bombers. It was also used to destroy military command and communication centers.

The planes cost $45 million each, and 59 were built. The F-117 first flew in combat during the 1989 Panama invasion that led to the capture of dictator Manuel Noriega. F-117s were also among the first aircraft to strike targets in the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In 2006, with the introduction of the F-22, a fighter that features the latest stealth technology, the Pentagon decided to retire all 59 of the F-117s, leading to today's final flights.

The retirement also serves as a reminder of the decline of the aerospace industry in Southern California. The plane was built in the 1980s when Lockheed's Burbank plant employed more than 17,000 workers. The Burbank plant closed in 1994 and Lockheed now employs about 4,000 engineers in Palmdale.

Although a number of companies in the region still make aircraft parts and develop advanced weapon systems, large-scale manufacturing has mostly disappeared. The C-17 military cargo plane plant in Long Beach and the F-18 fuselage factory in El Segundo are about all that remain.

"It does show how dramatically the industry has changed in Southern California," said Jack Kyser, chief economist with the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

The F-117 retirement ceremony is likely to be a somber event mostly attended by retirees who can finally talk about the aircraft -- if only to a certain extent.

"I would rather not get into it. I'm not sure if that is still classified," said Sherman N. Mullin, the former president of Lockheed's Skunk Works who led the F-117 program in the 1980s, when asked how the plane was transported from Burbank to its test flights in Nevada.

He declined to confirm news reports at the time that massive C-5 Galaxy military cargo planes were used to "deliver or pick up secret cargo" -- the stealth -- in the dead of night. The speculation arose after residents complained about aircraft noise from Burbank airport late at night, according to a 1984 Times article. The plane was assembled in a hangar next to the airport.

During its development, the F-117 flew only at night to avoid prying eyes and Soviet spy satellites, thus its name Night Hawk.

The project was so secretive that Mullin couldn't even tell his wife what he did.

"She didn't know for 10 years," Mullin said, adding that every Friday, the entire complex was locked up for the weekend and no one was allowed to take work off-site. "I don't think she minded. She liked that I didn't bring home any work on the weekends."

Monday's telephone interview from his home in Oxnard was the first time Mullin had talked to a reporter about the F-117, more than a quarter-century after he led its development efforts.

Mullin said his fondest memory was a Friday afternoon in 1983 when the Air Force declared that the plane was ready for combat. But it would be four years before the government acknowledged its existence.

"It was an afternoon of great emotional satisfaction for me," Mullin said. "But we didn't celebrate. We didn't do a darn thing. We just locked up the place and went home."

peter.pae@latimes.com

Tue Apr 22, 2008 4:46 pm

i'm sure the usaf will apply ample moth balls while in storage...... they took the sr -71 out of retirement too some years back!!

Tue Apr 22, 2008 9:10 pm

So does anyone have an official tally?

59 total built,

How many of the 59 still survive?

How many were lost in accidents or during operations?

How many are on display in museums around the country?

How many are being kept in storage?


Still a cool plane. Always was a strange sight to see flying, especially when it banked up and away. Too cool 8)

Image

Image


Shay
_____________
Semper Fortis

Tue Apr 22, 2008 11:39 pm

Shay wrote:So does anyone have an official tally?

59 total built,

How many of the 59 still survive?

How many were lost in accidents or during operations?

How many are on display in museums around the country?

_____________
Semper Fortis

There's one on a stick at Plant 42
One was shot down in Bosnia
One was wadded an an airshow..
there's other incidents..

Tue Apr 22, 2008 11:47 pm

One is on display in the NMUSAF.

Re: F-117A Final Flights - Yesterday (April 21st)

Wed Apr 23, 2008 1:02 am

RMAllnutt wrote:The F-117A's were retired yesterday with the final flight of four aircraft out of Holloman AFB. I guess that makes them warbirds now.

Guess they're historic now. They'll be warbirds when there's an example flying for fun or commemoration.

It's not just the policemen getting younger. :shock:

Wed Apr 23, 2008 2:42 am

only 1 was lost in combat, over bosnia hersgovina i believe. hit by a s.a.m.

Wed Apr 23, 2008 3:59 am

tom d. friedman wrote:only 1 was lost in combat, over bosnia hersgovina i believe. hit by a s.a.m.


There's an interesting warbird connection to this event. The F-117 that was shot down over Serbia had the name of Ken Dwelle on the aircraft. Does that ring a bell to anybody? Ken is the son of Tom Dwelle, who was the pilot of the Sea Fury, "Critical Mass", which was a Reno Air Race champion. Even though Ken's name was on the aircraft, another pilot was actually flying the Stealth when it got shot down.

Here is a picture from wikipedia of the canopy from the shot-down bird, as displayed in the Aviation Museum in Belgrade:


Image

Wed Apr 23, 2008 6:10 am

I have never understood why we didn't target the wreckage of that Bosnian shoot-down and further scatter it, rendering it (potentially) useless for tactical and propaganda purposes. Obviously there would've been casualties as footage showed a large crowd of people surrounding the wreckage, but why didn't we do that?

How much of that aircraft remains in Belgrade? Thanks for that picture; I'd never seen that before.

Dave G

Wed Apr 23, 2008 6:25 am

DaveG wrote:I have never understood why we didn't target the wreckage of that Bosnian shoot-down and further scatter it, rendering it (potentially) useless for tactical and propaganda purposes. Obviously there would've been casualties as footage showed a large crowd of people surrounding the wreckage, but why didn't we do that?

How much of that aircraft remains in Belgrade? Thanks for that picture; I'd never seen that before.

Dave G


You hit the nail on the head. The reason was due to collateral damage to civilians. In order to do that, we would have had to kill all of the bystanders around the wreckage. There was no way to "neutralize" the wreckage without massive civilian casualties. The political consequences of that being televised around the world was unpalatable and would have had far reaching political implications. As you recall, shortly after this incident, we accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. That incident did us no favors in world relations.

Wed Apr 23, 2008 8:15 am

I am glad I got to see them flying at airshows when I did. It was a very cool sight. 8)

Wed Apr 23, 2008 8:23 am

This is a picture someone else took of them leaving Palmdale, who knows, this could be the last civilian picture of a flying F-117?

Also there is one on a stick at Nellis..........

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/sho ... p?t=491295

Mark H

Wed Apr 23, 2008 8:24 am

DAMMMMMMMM Double Posting

Mark H

Wed Apr 23, 2008 9:24 am

There was the one lost in the Kern River back in the 80's if I remember correctly.
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