The Story of how the step taken to hide the F-117

What may be more amazing than the F-117 Nighthawk itself was the team of highly dedicated maintenance staff, operations personnel and pilots who lived like vampires for the better part of a decade while the program was operating deep in the classified world.

link.

a reply to: anzha

We lost a huge group of FB-111 pilots and maintenance crews to the program to make the A-7 supersonic and night capable that later turned out to be this one.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I feel sorry for the family members of the ones that transferred.
Unless they were real fans of open desert nothingness and a one horse town with a creepy clown hotel, there wasn't a lot to look forward to.

I think it's a neat looking aircraft, but I'm still partial to the SR-71.

a reply to: Sammamishman

They went to Nellis. They'd fly them out to Tonopah for work and back. Their families didn't have a clue.

Very cool article. Thanks for sharing.

a reply to: SonofaSkunk

Seconded, great article.

Nice good read that, thanks for posting. Reminded me of the story my dad told me only the other week as first time ever heard it. Can't see my dad making it up as he not that sort of people to do that.

As he was saying when he was in early years of being in the RAF, as he was ground engineer serving on the Buccaneer back in 81 they were out by Vegas for red flag exercise. One time one of the aircraft was coming off the range and had a bird strike put big hole in the aircraft, so was needing to land pretty quickly one of the airports crew got told could use was the Tonopah air base.

As they ended up landing there due to being top secret base would'nt let aircrew leave or my dad and rest of the ground crew come and fix it. So the Americans fixed plane up for them the crew flew it out couple days later.
Only thing crew said when got back was would'nt believe stuff that goes on there, and they seen very cool looking air plane in one of the hangers as the door was open.
It was only years later that my dad and rest of the guys realised that the aircraft pilots had seen was the F117.

originally posted by: Sammamishman
a reply to: Zaphod58

I feel sorry for the family members of the ones that transferred.
Unless they were real fans of open desert nothingness and a one horse town with a creepy clown hotel, there wasn't a lot to look forward to.

Oh dude....you're talking about Mtn. Home Idaho...too....hey there was a woman behind every tree.....
I was so homesick.......good for me to talk about it......ya see....."the wind don't blow in Idaho.......it sucks " was the cry......

FB111-F model.....we left one of them with two Dallas 28 year olds in a cliff cause we couldn't find a trace of them...I testified that I could shake the TFR computer on the bench tester....and get different readings.