F-117 Stealth Fighter Program Secrecy Anecdotes

The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Winston

Lorenzo von Matterhorn
Joined
Jan 31, 2009
Messages
9,560
Reaction score
1,748
F-117 Program Used These Futuristic Hand Scanners While Highly Classified In The '80s
America's first operational stealth aircraft program still has so many stories to tell, many of which are stranger than fiction.
5 Feb 2018

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...d-scanners-while-highly-classified-in-the-80s

That new article had a link to this old article which was even more interesting:

The F-117 Stealth Fighter Program Actually Had A 'Klingon Cloaking Device'

https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-f-117-stealth-fighter-program-actually-had-a-klingo-1759842067

The Ruse

As part of the F-117's cover, another much more humble aircraft had to be assigned to F-117s units under the 4450th Tactical Group’s umbrella.

This aircraft would not only help justify all the action at the “Black Jet’s” remote air base, becoming boring fodder for prying Soviet satellites, but it would also be necessary to keep up pilot proficiency in a platform that performed similarly to the F-117 itself.

The aging A-7 Corsair II, nicknamed the SLUF as in Short Little Ugly F****r/Fellow, was chosen for this role, and it became the “official” jet assigned to the shadowy 4450th Tactical Group.

The cover story was that these humble A-7s and their crews worked as avionics development testers for the Air Force. That was a total fabrication. Once the sun went down, A-7 pilots were flying the world’s only stealth jet.

“We began to stretch our legs and plan deployments using the A-7s as a surrogate for the F-117. We planned the deployment of a few aircraft to Homestead AFB, Florida, and learned from our actions. The OSI was specifically charged with finding out what was going on. We captured them before they got to our perimeter fence at Homestead AFB. The only outward signs that there was something out of the ordinary going on at Homestead was an OSI notation that there were some folks at a nearby motel wearing cowboy boots and other western apparel. We took note of that and were more careful of our “western” markings on later deployments."

"We used the A-7 in our deployments to Young Tiger in South Korea and then to Great Britain. It was under our cover story for the A-7 of advanced avionics testing that the Klingon Cloaking Device was developed. We needed some purpose for the A-7s to be so special, and have all the attention and security that seemed to accompany the 4450th wherever we went."

"It was in this vein that TSgt’s. Phillip Barta and Charles Baggerly took a BLU-27 napalm bomb shell, reinforced it according to Tactical Air Command instructions for a baggage pod, and constructed the Klingon Cloaking Device."

"It has the front lens from an electro-optically guided glide bomb on the nose with a red light that had a soft pulsing glow showing through a ground glass lens. It had numerous blade antennas from the UHF and VHF frequency spectrum and several faux blowout ports similar to those used as exhaust ports for gas grain generators on early generation nuclear weapons. It was truly an awesome looking thing when mounted under the wing of an A-7.”


tzaw3zg1eylptxb5xeg4.jpg


The Pranks

The inside jokes didn’t end with the crazy “Top Secret” decoy pod carried by the A-7s. The few visitors allowed to tour Tonopah Test Range Airport during the F-117's tenure there would be told that they will be shown the “invisible aircraft.”

Ground crews would set up an elaborate scene in advance in one of Tonopah’s dimly lit hangars. Wheels, chocks, an air hose, and even a pilot’s helmet would be arrayed as if there were an invisible F-117 right there, with some of the components suspended in air by nearly invisible fishing line.

Add a few ground crewmen working around the cloaked jet just as if they were servicing a real material aircraft and it was a convincing vision, even if for just a brief moment. The visitors would enter the hangar and be totally stunned with what they were seeing, Here are some photos of what this bizarre prank looked like:


u6v5sjxqopfuy9hyqgwe.jpg
 
The 727 that DB Cooper hijacked was one of the aircraft that carried the maintenance crews from Nellis to Tonapah. Witnessed that one on the ramp during '88 Red Flag. The cockpit technology that we thought was brand new in our factory smelling F-15E models (1989) was previously used in the Night Hawk and it was wicked good! It was amazing how many "A-7" buds were in our unit and when Pentagon released the 117 info, some of the things they could share with us then was incredible.
 
Back
Top