Remember the F-117 shot down over Serbia?

Hampden98,

Shot down by SA-3 Goa. An SA-3 was also responsible for damage to another F-117 during the conflict in 1999. The AAA theory was purely from the stills of the wreckage at the time. Many observers confused the SA-3 fragmentation warhead holes with what they thought were bullet holes. The 250th Air Defence Missile Brigade later confirmed that it was purely SA-3s that were used in the shootdown.

Pilot of the shot down F-117, Lt. Colonel Dale Zelko, describes the event in the following video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmqLyn4Q15U

The following video link shows the pilot of F-117, 82-806, Lt. Colonel Dale Zelko, meeting up with the Commander of the SAM battery, Lt. Colonel Zoltan Dani, in Serbia, during 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tyMdBOmNC8

A second film was released during 2012. See following link.

http://www.optimisticfilm.com/second-meeting.html

This following is the first documentary featuring Lt. Colonel Zoltan Dani. Unfortunately not in English, but contains video footage of the wreckage and the part that Lt Col Dani keeps in his garage (Part 4). Part 4 also contains the F-117 pilots account being translated to Zoltan Dani.

Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38I70fVurqQ

Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzfEzjejX8U

Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j74HutKOOO4

Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOCHjOxR2SQ

Another F-117 was damaged by an SA-3 Goa during 1999.

Jun 9, 1999 Operation Allied Force ended. More than 800 SAMs were fired at NATO aircraft, but only one F-117 and one F-16 were downed. Another F-117 suffered minor damage from a SA-3 that exploded nearby and two A-10s were damaged by anti-aircraft artillery fire. During the campaign, 35,219 sorties were flown, 16,587 non-precision guided missiles and 6,728 precision guided missiles (23,315) were dropped

http://www.af.mil/information/heritage/milestones.asp?dec=1990&sd=01/01/1990&ed=12/31/1999

http://www.af.mil/

I was doing some private research into Operation Allied Force and requested the serial of this combat damaged F-117 under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Five documents were retrieved during a 2011 search, but all are still classified.

The story is interesting but as an aside I love the fact that he ‘felt uncomfortable’ in is ‘warplane (that) so advanced that it was all but invisible to enemy radar’ as the Prowler radar jammers and the F-16s with anti-radar missiles. Surely everything is radar invisible if you have jammed or destroyed all the radar?!

I remember at the time someone I knew saying ‘how come they shot it down, surely it is radar invisible?’ and my answer was ‘perhaps, but it was not lead invisible!’

How was it shot down?
I always thought it was by AAA. I would have thought being radar invisible doesn;t mean a lot if you can put a box barrage up in the path of the aircraft. True, radar improves accuracy, but if the lead hits the plane it goes down.

I’m reading the book `Fisaco` about the US war in Iraq.
The US military had to change their doctrine the first time they used Apaches in a close support role. These `invulnerable to gunfire` helicopters encountered heavy ground fire, most of which was rifle calibre. One Apache was shot down and all the remaining aircraft returned `shot up`.

I guess the Superpowers have forgotten that lead makes holes regardless of how expensive or advanced the thing it hits is!

And he was in fact an American citizen, of Croatian birth, not Serbian.

Don’t wanna nitpick and OT, but I really can’t help myself here.
Tesla was indeed an American citizen (and Yugoslavian at the same time), but he was Serbian by birth. He might have been born in a territory that belongs to Croatia nowadays, but back in the 19th century it was part of Austro-Hungary, and a region inhabited mostly by Serbs.
Having said that, I apologize for OT and reviving old threads.

Indeed – as I discovered when I read about him following the post on the thread.

However I would still be interested to hear observations from any who know a great deal more than me, on what appear to be anomalies in the story.

Tesla was a unique visionary, as well as an utter genius of an electrical inventor.

There have been many researchers who have, thinking they have invented something new in the electrical field, applied for a patent only to learn Tesla patented the specific idea decades earlier (although he rarely actually built the item).

Thank you. My concern is that whatever the Serbian Colonel was able to do was from wartime or pre-war studies since Mr Tesla died in 1943 at the age of 86. And he was in fact an American citizen, of Croatian birth, not Serbian. So he was not working with any newly discovered material.

Remember, the F-117 was designed in the 1970s, and the (relatively) limited materials & computing capability of the time meant that it was targeted specifically at the then-current Soviet ground-based fire-control radar wavelengths… radar of different wavelengths were less-affected by the facets & materials used.

By the time of the Serbian operations it was known that different fire-control frequencies were also in use, and that techniques of using search radars (which used very different wavelengths/frequency bands) to localize an F-117 for IR & optical fire-control units to target were being developed, so they added the EA-6Bs and so on.

Political restrictions forcing them to use the same ingress/egress routes made things even worse.

Our current stealth designs are effective against a broader range of radar wavelengths/frequency bands, but they still cannot be made “LO” against all radar wavelengths/frequency bands.

“Citing Serbian electronics genius Nikola Tesla as an inspiration, Zoltan had the equipment modified so it would operate beyond the usual wavelengths.”

If the quote is accurate, and you never know what you are reading these days, then it reveals a major potential weakness in the design, which appears to be supported by the pilot’s comments. If the F117 needed that array of protection what purpose did it actually serve?

The story is interesting but as an aside I love the fact that he ‘felt uncomfortable’ in is ‘warplane (that) so advanced that it was all but invisible to enemy radar’ as the Prowler radar jammers and the F-16s with anti-radar missiles. Surely everything is radar invisible if you have jammed or destroyed all the radar?!

I remember at the time someone I knew saying ‘how come they shot it down, surely it is radar invisible?’ and my answer was ‘perhaps, but it was not lead invisible!’