Your super secret airplane just crashed and everyone knows where. Now what?
'At the crash site investigators collected evidence and evaluated the remains of the aircraft for clues to the cause of the tragedy. Then came the task of cleaning the site and leaving no pieces of the highly classified aircraft for scavengers, the media, or others to find. A clean-up team moved out a thousand feet from the last of the recognizable debris and then dug and sifted all the dirt in the area.
'On Jul. 23, controlled explosive charges were detonated on the hillside to free pieces of the aircraft buried as the result of the crash.'
Then, according to Knowledge Stew, the Air Force brought in a crashed F-101A Voodoo, an aircraft that had been out of service with the Air Force since 1972 and with the Air National Guard since 1982. The crashed Voodoo had been in storage at the secretive Area 51 in Nevada for more than 20 years, and it was broken up and put in place of the F-117 debris. Almost a month later, the Air Force said the area was no longer restricted.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11, @10:39AM
I identify more as an A-10. F-117 is pretty damn cool though.
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Friday October 11, @11:38AM (1 child)
That's kind of an interesting story in itself.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Frosty Piss on Friday October 11, @04:21PM
Having been an AF firefighter / rescue guy in the 80's and 90's, I'd been to Groom Lake to train on f117 egress and recovery, and always got a kick out of what people thought it might look like, especially later when I was stationed at Beale AFB and worked with the SR71 (lots of gauges, very little "glass") and U2. As to the Voodoo kept in storage for 20+ years, it's normal to keep such things for training.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 11, @11:55AM (2 children)
Wouldn't it be more appropriate to disguise your aircraft as ghosts, bats, and witches? Maybe an Alien or Predator space craft? A realistic F-117 seems rather mundane, doesn't it?
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 4, Funny) by VLM on Friday October 11, @01:01PM (1 child)
In the 80s when everyone knew there was a stealth fighter but it was classified until '88 the major plastic model makers made very imaginative plastic models of theoretical stealth fighters. I believe I assembled and painted a Testors model. Which looked NOTHING like the F-117. Also video game mfgrs made games like F-19 IIRC the graphics looked like my plastic models, not like the real thing.
My point above is it would have been an epic troll to end all history if the air force had hired some Hollywood prop designers with a contract boiling down to "make a life size Testors model" out of old scrap metal and Hollywood prop material and then drop it from a crane a couple times into the field and THEN let the media types think they got a scoop. "Holy crap this super classified A/C looks exactly like the Testors model, amazing..."
It's a good thing I never went into the officer corps because I would have F-d around too much, I'd have spray-painted morale-boosting messages on the airplane until it was beyond ridiculous. "Serial number 13479 of 38957", "Veteran of the Man-Martian wars" and "photon torpedo starboard mounting pylon" and three or so little silhouettes of shot down UFOs under the canopy. And I came up with that sober this morning, I can imagine me getting lit up in some dive bar in the 80s at 2am and coming up with some really crazy/hilarious stuff.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11, @02:24PM
> I can imagine me getting lit up in some dive bar ...
In an earlier era, it could have been this joint--
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Bottom_Riding_Club [wikipedia.org]