Subject: Number 117 in the Series--Lockheed F-117A (3 of 3)

From: [email-masked]
Date: 25 Mar 94 17:25:10 GMT

>From [email-masked]

This report on the F-117 stealth fighter concludes with an account of 
its developmental and operational history, or at least that part of it 
which has been released to the public.  

The results of the *Have Blue* testing were sufficiently encouraging 
that William Perry, who was at that time Under-Secretary of Defense 
for Research and Engineering in the Carter Administration, urged that 
the Air Force apply the technology to an operational aircraft.  During 
November of 1978, Lockheed was awarded a go-ahead contract to begin 
full-scale development of the project.  This was a "Special Access", 
i.e.  black, program, and the code name *Senior Trend* was applied to 
the project.  

The *Senior Trend* aircraft came to be defined as a single-seat night 
strike fighter with no radar, but with an electro-optic system for 
navigation and weapons delivery.  No air-to-air capability was 
envisaged.  

The first five *Senior Trend* aircraft built by Lockheed were to be 
preproduction full scale development (FSD) aircraft.  The *Senior 
Trend* aircraft had the same general configuration as the *Have Blue* 
test aircraft, but was much larger and heavier.  The engines were a 
pair of non-afterburning General Electric F404-GE-F1D2 turbofans.  
These were derivatives of the afterburning F404-GE-400 turbofans which 
power the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet.  

In early June of 1981, the first *Senior Trend* service test aircraft 
(tail number 780) was delivered to Groom Lake for testing.  On June 
18, 1981, Lockheed test pilot Harold C "Hal" Farley made a successful 
first flight in number 780.  During mid-1981 and early 1982, the other 
four FSD *Senior Trend* aircraft joined the program.  They bore tail 
numbers 781 through 784 respectively.  

The first production *Senior Trend* (#785) arrived at Groom Lake in 
April of 1982.  It differed from the pre-production *Senior Trend* 
aircraft in having a pair of enlarged fin/rudder assemblies, with 
three facets rather than just two.  Aircraft number 785 was ready for 
its first flight on April 20, with Lockheed test pilot Robert L.  
Ridenauer was scheduled to make the first flight.  However, 
unbeknownst to anyone, the fly-by-wire system had been hooked up 
incorrectly (pitch was yaw and vice versa).  Upon liftoff, Ridenauer's 
plane immediately went out of control.  Instead of the nose pitching 
up, it went horizontal.  The aircraft went inverted and ended up 
traveling backwards through the air.  Riedenauer had no time to eject, 
and the aircraft flew into the ground.  Bob Riedenauer survived the 
crash but was severely injured and was forced to retire from flying.  
The aircraft was damaged beyond repair, but some of its parts could be 
salvaged.  Since this aircraft crashed prior to USAF/TAC acceptance, 
it was not counted in the production total.  

When it came time for the establishment of the first operational unit 
for the stealth fighter, the Air Force was faced with a problem.  
Groom Lake was too small to be useful as the base for an operational 
unit.  In addition, there were security concerns because an 
operational unit based at Groom Lake would involve many more people 
who could now see things that they should not be seeing.  Therefore, 
the USAF decided to build a new secret base for the stealth fighter on 
the Tonopah Test Range, which sits on the northwestern corner of the 
Nellis complex.  The facility is not perfect from a security 
standpoint, since it is overlooked by public land and is 32 miles from 
the town of Tonopah itself.  However, the security surrounding the 
Tonopah Test Range was so effective that the new base was not public 
reported until 1985, after it had been operating for nearly two years.  

The 4450th Tactical Group was secretly established as the initial 
operator of the stealth fighter.  The cover for the 4450th was that it 
was a Nellis-based outfit flying LTV A-7Ds, which was not entirely 
inaccurate since the outfit did use these planes for support training.  
The group received its first production stealth aircraft on September 
2, 1982.  The 4450th moved to Tonopah in 1983, equipped with a partial 
squadron of stealth fighters plus a few A-7Ds.  The group achieved 
initial operational capability on October 28, 1983, with a total of 14 
production aircraft on hand.  In order to avoid having the 4450th's 
aircraft seen by curious observers, all flying had to take place at 
night.  During the day, the aircraft were always kept behind closed 
doors inside special hangars.  

The stealth fighter turned out to be quite easy to fly, and it was 
concluded that no two-seat trainer version was required.  However, 
there was a training simulator.  

The Air Force considered using the stealth fighter in the invasion of 
Grenada during *Operation Nickel Grass* in 1983.  However, the 
operation was so swift that the action lasted only a couple of days, 
and the combat debut of the stealth was put off.  

In October of 1983 the US government considered using the stealth 
fighter in a retaliatory attack on Hezbollah terrorist forces based in 
southern Lebanon in response to the destruction of the Marine barracks 
in Beirut.  In anticipation of action, the 4450th TG at Tonopah was 
put on alert.  Five or seven stealth fighters were armed and had their 
INS systems aligned for attacks on targets in Lebanon.  The plan was 
for these planes to fly from Tonopah to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina 
where they would be put in secure hangars.  They would then wait for 
48 hours for the crews to rest before being given the order to take 
off for a nonstop flight to Lebanon.  However, Defense Secretary 
Casper Weinberger scrubbed the mission 45 minutes before the aircraft 
were to take off for South Carolina.  

On April 4, 1986, during *Operation El Dorado Canyon*, the United 
States attacked Libya in retaliation for state-sponsored terrorism.  
During the initial planning for the raid, the use of the still-secret 
stealth fighter in the operation was seriously considered.  However, 
once again, the operation was short-lived and the stealth fighter was 
not used.  

In spite of the extreme security, some bits and pieces of the stealth 
fighter story did manage to leak to the press.  In October of 1981, 
*Aviation Week* reported that an operational stealth fighter was in 
development.  Several people reported catching some fleeting glimpses 
of a rather odd-looking aircraft flying at night out in the western 
desert.  More and more stuff leaked to the media, so that all through 
the 1980s it had been sort of an open secret that the USAF was 
operating a "stealth fighter" which was invisible to conventional 
radar.  However, questions directed to the Pentagon by the press about 
the stealth fighter were met either with official denials or by a curt 
"no comment", which only served to whet peoples' curiosity even 
further.  

The official designation of the rumored stealth fighter was assumed by 
just about everyone to be F-19, since that number had had not been 
assigned to any known aircraft.  The novelist Tom Clancy placed the 
stealth fighter (named "F-19 Ghostrider" by him) in a key role in his 
technothriller novel "Red Storm Rising", published in 1986.  The 
Testors plastic model airplane company marketed a kit which purported 
to the true configuration of the "stealth" fighter.  

In the meantime, training continued out in the Nevada desert.  On July 
11, 1986, Major Ross E. Mulhare flew into a mountain near 
Bakersfield, California while flying production aircraft number seven 
(tail number 792).  Major Mulhare seems to have made no attempt to 
eject and was killed instantly, his aircraft disintegrating upon 
impact.  A recovery team was immediately dispatched to the crash site, 
and the entire area was cordoned off.  Every identifiable piece of the 
crashed plane was found and removed from the area to prevent them from 
falling into the wrong hands.  The doomed aircraft had reportedly 
carried a flight data recorder, which is sort of unusual for a USAF 
fighter.  Even though not much was found that was any bigger than a 
beer can, the flight recorder was supposedly recovered intact.  In 
order to throw scavengers, the media, and the merely curious off the 
track, the recovery crew took the remains of a crashed F-101A Voodoo 
that had been at Groom Lake for over twenty years, broke them up, and 
scattered them throughout the area.  The cause of the crash has never 
been officially revealed, but fatigue and disorientation during night 
flying has been identified as a probable cause.  

On October 14, 1987, while flying production aircraft number 30 (tail 
number 815), Major Michael C. Stewart crashed in the Nellis range 
just east of Tonopah.  He too apparently made no attempt to eject, and 
was killed instantly.  Again, the official cause was never revealed, 
but fatigue and disorientation may have both played a role.  There was 
no moon that night, and there were no lights out on the Nellis range 
to help the pilot to distinguish the ground.  Reportedly, the mission 
included certain requirements that were deleted from the final 
accident report.  It is possible that Stewart was going supersonic 
when he crashed and that he had become disoriented during high-speed 
maneuvers and had simply flown his plane into the ground.  

These two accidents, along with a need to better integrate the 
still-secret stealth fighter into its regular operations, forced the 
Air Force to consider flying the aircraft during daytime hours.  This 
would in turn force the Air Force to reveal the existence of the 
aircraft.  This announcement was originally scheduled to take place in 
early 1988, but internal Pentagon pressure forced a ten-month delay.  

On November 10, 1988, the long-rumored existence of the "stealth 
fighter" was finally officially confirmed by the Pentagon, and a 
poor-quality photograph was released.  The stealth fighter was kept 
secret for over ten years, the security and deception being so 
effective that all descriptions which had "leaked" to the media were 
completely inaccurate.  

On the same day, the Air Force confirmed that the official designation 
of the stealth fighter was F-117A, which surprised just about 
everyone.  The official designation of the stealth fighter had long 
been assumed by just about everyone to be F-19, since that number had 
apparently been skipped in the new fighter designation sequence which 
was introduced in 1962.  In addition, it had always been assumed that 
the designation F-111 had been the last in the old series of fighter 
designations which been abandoned in 1962 when the Defense Department 
restarted the whole sequence over again from F-1.  This led to a 
seeming endless round of rumors and speculation about aircraft 
designation gaps and secret projects, which continue to the present 
day.  If the stealth fighter was not designated F-19, then just what 
WAS F-19? If the F-117A was part of the old F-sequence, then what 
happened to F-112 through F-116? 

The true answer is not yet known, but I think that the most likely 
explanation is that the 117 number is NOT in the old F-sequence that 
ended in 1962 but instead originated from the radio call signs used by 
the Stealth pilots when they were flying out of Groom Lake and 
Tonopah, two of the black planes' bases.  Those are the same airfields 
that supposedly secretely operated Soviet- bloc aircraft such as the 
MiG-15, MiG-19, MiG-21, and MiG-23 that the US had "acquired" by 
various means from such sources as Egypt, Israel, Romania, etc.  While 
in flight, these aircraft were distinguished from each other by 
three-digit radio call signs (generally 11x).  After a while, these 
radio call signs came to be sort of unofficial designations for these 
aircraft, and even later, F-prefixes began to be attached to these 
designations.  The F-112 to F-116 are often speculated to be Soviet 
aircraft such as Su-22, MiG-19, MiG-21, MiG-23, or MiG-25.  There is 
even a rumor that there exists a F-116A, which is a US-built 
version of the MiG-25 constructed to see what kind of threat the 
MiG-25 could be if the Soviets were able to build it using Western 
techniques.  There is also thought to be an F-118, which might be a 
Mig-29 that was purchased before the fall of the USSR.  Since the 
stealth fighter was operating in the same general area in Nevada, it 
came to be known by the radio call sign of 117.  The number 117 became 
so closely associated with the stealth fighter that when Lockheed 
printed up the first Dash One Pilot Manual, it had "F-117A" on the 
cover.  Since the Air Force didn't want to pay millions of dollars to 
re-do all the manuals, the aircraft became the F-117A officially.  It 
may have even been initially designated F-19 in the early stages of 
the project, and might well have continued to be known as the F-19 had 
this mistake not been made.  A similar mistake was made when LBJ 
announced the existence of the "Blackbird".  It was supposed to have 
been designated RS-71, but LBJ announced it as SR-71 and noone had the 
guts to tell LBJ that he had goofed.  The designation stuck.  

This still leaves the question of the missing F-19 unanswered.  
Perhaps the F-19 refers to some other "black" project, as yet 
unrevealed.  Perhaps the F-19 does not exist at all, the designation 
having been deliberately or accidentally skipped.  Shortly after the 
official revelation of the F-117, an Air Force spokesman answered 
questions about the "missing" F-19 by stating that the F-19 
designation had been deliberately skipped in order to prevent 
confusion with the Soviet MiG-19.  If you believe this explanation, 
I've got a bridge for sale :-).  Another possibility that has been 
mentioned by several people is that the F-19 designation was 
deliberately skipped in order to let Northrop receive the designation 
F-20 for its advanced version of the F-5 fighter.  Apparently, 
Northrop thought that the F-20 designation would make for good 
advertising copy for its new fighter (a slogan such as "The F-20--the 
first of a new series of fighters" immediately comes to mind), and the 
Air Force agreed.  A similar sort of thing happened during World War 
2, when the designation P-74 (and perhaps P-73 as well) were not 
assigned so that the Fisher Body division of General Motors could get 
the designation P-75 for its Eagle heavy escort fighter ("The French 
75 in World War 1--The Fisher P-75 in World War 2").  

The 4450th Tactical Group was disbanded in October of 1989, and the 
37th Tactical Fighter Wing was established in its place.  The 37th TFW 
had three squadrons, the 415th, 416th, and 417th.  The 415th and 416th 
squadrons flew production F-117As, whereas the 417th flew the 
pre-production F-117As.  The 417th also operated some LTV A-7Ds for 
chase and training, but T-38A and AT-38B aircraft eventually replaced 
them.  

On December 19, 1989, just 13 months after the Pentagon had disclosed 
the existence of the F-117A, it was used in combat for the first time.  
This was in *Operation Just Cause*, the invasion of Panama intended to 
dislodge and arrest General Manuel Noreiga.  At the beginning of the 
invasion, six F-117As flew to Panama from Tonopah.  Their mission was 
to drop 2000-pound bombs near the Panama Defense Forces (PDF) barracks 
at Rio Hato.  The purpose of these bomb drops was to stun and 
disorient the PDF troops living there so that the barracks could be 
stormed and the troops captured with minimal resistance and 
casualties.  The pilots were instructed to drop their bombs no closer 
than 50 meters from two separate PDF barracks buildings.  On the night 
of December 19, two lead F-117As each dropped a conventional 
2000-pound bomb at the Rio Hato barracks.  The bombing attack seems to 
have achieved its goal, since the barracks were quickly taken with 
minimal resistance.  

However, it was revealed three months later that one of the bombs had 
missed its target by a considerable amount.  It seems that there had 
been some mis-communication in the final stages of the mission 
planning, and the pilot had been given the wrong coordinates for the 
target.  However, the media jumped on this event and concluded that 
the F-117A had been a failure on its first mission.  

On April 21, 1990, stung perhaps by the press criticism, the Pentagon 
released more information on the F-117A.  More photos of better 
quality were released, and at Nellis AFB there was a public display of 
two F-117As.  

The last production F-117A was delivered to the Air Force on July 12, 
1990.  

It was to be in *Operation Desert Storm* that the F-117A was to prove 
its mettle.  In response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 
1990, the 415th TFS of the 37th TFW was deployed to Saudi Arabia on 
August 19, 1990.  The 416th TFS followed in December of 1990.  In 
January of 1991, a portion of the wing's 417th TFTS was also deployed 
to Saudi Arabia.  In spite of the massive Coalition buildup, President 
Saddam Hussein of Iraq stubbornly refused to withdraw his troops from 
Kuwait.  On January 17, 1991, the Coalition began an air offensive to 
eject Iraqi troops from Kuwait.  In the early morning hours, the 
F-117As of the 37th TFW initiated the air war against Iraq.  Mission 
planners had assigned critical strategic Iraqi command and control 
installations to the F-117A, counting on the aircraft's ability to hit 
precisely at well-defended targets without being seen.  Other vital 
targets included key communications centers, research and development 
facilities for nuclear and chemical weapons, plus hardened aircraft 
shelters on Iraqi airfields.  On the first night of the war, an F-117A 
dropped a 2000-pound laser-guided GBU-27 Paveway III bomb right 
through the roof of the general communications building in downtown 
Baghdad.  In another attack on the communications building next to the 
Tigris River, another GBU-27 Paveway III was dropped through an air 
shaft in the center of the roof atop the building and blew out all 
four walls.  During the first three weeks of the air offensive, 
F-117As obliterated many hardened targets with unprecedented 
precision.  The 37th TFW flew 1271 combat sorties and maintained an 
85.5 percent mission-capable rate.  The 43 F-117As of the 37th TFW 
dropped more than 2000 tons of precision ordinance and attacked some 
40 percent of the high-value targets that were struck by the Coalition 
forces.  Not one F-117A was hit, shot down, or lost to mechanical 
failure.  There is no evidence that the F-117A was ever detected or 
tracked by Iraqi radar installations, either ground or airborne.  The 
F-117's concealment, deception, and evasiveness proved that it could 
survive in the most hostile of environments, and its laser-guided 
bombs struck with extreme accuracy.  

Most of the F-117As deployed to Saudi Arabia returned home to Nellis 
AFB in April of 1991, but a few remain in Saudi Arabia.  

The F-117A is currently out of production, but the Senate Armed 
Services Committee expressed an interest in acquiring 24 additional 
F-117As.  However, the Air Force claimed that the F-117A is now 
"obsolete technology", and that it did not need or want any more of 
them.  

In 1994, there has been some thought given to building a navalized 
version of the stealth fighter to replace the cancelled A-12 project.  
This would produce a new set of challenges for designers.  The 
aircraft would have to have catapult attachment points and arrester 
hooks and still be capable of maintaining the integrity of its 
stealthy exterior.  Afterburning engines would presumably have to be 
fitted to make carrier launchings with heavy payloads feasible, which 
would require that the complex exhaust system be completely 
redesigned.  If this project is funded, it will be given the 
designation F-117N.  However, no firm decision has yet been made.  

Although the F-117A has been called Frisbee, Nighthawk, and Wobblin' 
Goblin, there is no official name for it.  Pilots often nickname the 
F-117A the "Black Jet".  

F-117A number 781 is now on display at the Wright-Patterson AFB Museum 
at Dayton, Ohio.  This was one of the five full-scale development 
machines.  I saw it there in June of 1992.  In the interest of 
security, the RAM covering was replaced by a layer of black paint, and 
the narrow slotted exhaust ports were faired over to prevent anyone 
from peering inside to see the details of how the exhaust was 
constructed.  Two F-117A FSD aircraft are still flying, the other two 
are in storage.  

Sources:

  The F-117A Stealth Fighter, Steve Pace, Tab Aero, 1992.

  F-117A Stealth Fighter, Andy Sun, Concord Publications Co., 1990.

  F-117 Stealth in Action, Jim Goodall, Squadron/Signal Publications,
  1991.

  Lockheed F-117A, Bill Sweetman and James Goodall, Motorbooks
  International, 1990.  

Joe Baugher		AT&T Bell Laboratories   	
263 Shuman Boulevard 		Naperville, Illinois 60566-7050