How F-117 was shot down in 1999 by an SA-3 battery?

[VTOLicious]

Unless your target is said SAM site.

I never did understand why the F-117 wasn't used as a Wild Weasel...


My understanding was that this happened when a big turn put the bottom of the F-117 more or less perpendicular to the the SAM site, night after night because the idiots kept reusing the same routes. And that would make a huge bloom in RCS saying "there's something sneaky here!"

Don't know where I got this from...

 

[Scott Kenny]

Nope. The bay is built around a pair of trapeze to lower the weapons into the slipstream, so there's really only one suspension point on each side. And each side of the bay is sized to just barely hold a single GBU-27 (2000-lb Paveway with folding fins). By my math, that bomb is just a hair under 20 inches wide (28 inches across on the diagonal). A Mk 82 (clean, no guidance kit) is 10.7 inches. So you can't fit two across in the bay, even if you replaced the trapeze with some sort of multiple rack.

If the F-117 had stayed operational to the present, maybe it could fit SDBs, but why use a silver-bullet stealth aircraft to deliver glide bombs from standoff range?

I thought it was two bays, with the doors hinged at the center?

But at any rate, bugger. I was hoping you could stuff 4-6 500lb class in there.

Don't know where I got this from...

Very cool, thank you!

 

[BlackBat242]

 

[Hydroman]

From what I remember, the F-117s had been flying the same route every night due to other countries not allowing the F-117 to fly through their air spaces and also was poor mission planning to boot. An LO aircraft is not invisible and I think the missile battery operator was a sharp person and was seeing a repeating pattern then decided to fire, the rest is history.

 

[Grey Havoc]

Regarding Wild Weasel/SEAD operations, I seem to recall it was planned for the F-117 to be able to use the AGM-122 Sidearm, likely the stillborn B variant.

 

[Q-nimbus]

Perhaps a bit off-topic, but the SAM-operator and the downed F117 pilot hooked up after the war and became friends. This is a nice documentary and perhaps there’s still hope for humanity:

https://youtu.be/w-xTRRCMLAA?si=dc3wu-XL9XO4jV-I