How a Nighthawk Was Shot Down On 27th March, 1999 Lt. Col. Darrell Zelko from the USAF 49th Fighter Wing was on a bombing mission over Serbia in his F-117 A Nighthawk as a part of the Operation Allied Force. His mission was to take out the enemy command center near Belgrade. Without any support aircraft that night, Zelko relied solely on the stealth capabilities of his Nighthawk. But below him, a Serbian SAM battery under the command of Lt. Col. Zoltan Dani, equipped with an obsolete Soviet-made S-125 Neva missile system was waiting.
The F-117 Nighthawk, America’s first operational stealth aircraft, was thought to be nearly invisible to radar. But on March 27, 1999, during the Kosovo War, Yugoslav forces achieved the unthinkable: they shot one down.
Using an S-125 Neva surface-to-air missile system, Yugoslav forces tracked the stealth jet, callsign “Vega 31,” exploiting its predictable flight paths. The first missile missed, but the second detonated nearby, causing severe damage. The pilot, Lt. Col. Darrell Patrick Zelko, ejected and was later rescued.
This incident shocked the world, proving that even stealth technology has vulnerabilities and underscoring the importance of tactics, adaptation, and unpredictability in modern warfare.
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