The safety alarm sounded as the hangar door at the Smithsonian museum slid open and the mysterious, dark-colored jet was pushed out into the glare of the sun.
Daylight was not the realm of the F-117 Nighthawk. Its world was the dark sky over its targets. Its weapon was stealth. Its role was to fly unseen through enemy fire, attack and disappear.
But this jet, named “The Overachiever,” was 41 years old and a veteran of four conflicts. The F-117 line was retired from combat in 2008. And last week, on a tarmac outside Washington, tail number 85-0818 was prepared for its debut in a museum.
The aircraft, famous for a sci-fi design that made it almost invisible to enemy radar, is scheduled to go on display Wednesday at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia.
“This is an incredibly important airplane historically, technologically,” said Michael Hankins, the Air and Space museum’s curator for post-World War II military aviation.
“It’s also just really cool,” he said. “It’s very interesting-looking. It’s very different than anything else we have.”
It’s the first operational stealth aircraft, which means it’s very difficult to detect via radar, he said. Radar has long been used to help locate and shoot down combat aircraft.
But the F-117’s multifaceted shape and radar-absorbing surface made it difficult for radar to spot, he said. (Only one F-117 was ever shot down — in 1999 over Serbia. It was reportedly hit by a Yugoslav missile battery that, among other things, guessed the route the jet would be flying.)
“This one does not have any bullet holes,” Hankins said of the Smithsonian’s Nighthawk.
In 1991, the now-retired Air Force fighter pilot Matt Byrd flew 44 missions in F-117s during Operation Desert Storm, the allied campaign that defeated the forces of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein after his invasion of Kuwait.
All were at night. Some were in The Overachiever, he said.
“We were told [Baghdad] was the most heavily defended place on the planet,” he said. “We were very nervous. We were told by the engineers that this airplane was invisible. Our hope as pilots was: ‘We sure hope the engineers got it right.’”
On one mission to the Iraqi capital, the antiaircraft fire was so heavy it felt like you could get out and walk on it, he recalled.
“I didn’t think I was dead, I knew I was dead,” he said. “I knew there was no way I could fly through this hail of bullets.” But he and his F-117 did. Thank the Lord and the engineers, he said.
On another Baghdad mission, he saw two missiles that looked like they were headed right for him.
“The panic sets in,” he said. “Did I leave my lights on? Are my antennas out? Is my radar cross section up?”
In other jets, he might have tried to dodge the missiles. “But that’s where you recall what they told you in training: ‘You’re invisible,’” he said. “So you sit there and you just think small,” the airplane is just a dot in the sky.
Seconds later he heard two big explosions — “Boom! Boom!” — close but off target.
“They missed,” he said. “Huge relief. You’re not going to die.”
He went on to finish his attack.
“It was … a great testament to the technology of that airplane,” he said. “The engineers got it right. The tracking radar could not see me.”
Last week, after the jet was moved outside, technicians from Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, the California plant where it was built, prepared it for display.
It had already been modified and demilitarized.
“There are certain things on the aircraft that have to be done to it to protect classified information,” Hankins said. “That stealth coating has to be removed.” And certain parts of the wings have to be changed.
But the experts at Lockheed “did a very meticulous job of trying to restore it to as close to the original as can be” displayed publicly, Hankins said.
The wings and tails had also been removed so it could fit in the huge Air Force cargo jet that carried it from Palmdale, Calif., to nearby Dulles Airport this month.
After The Overachiever was pushed from the museum’s Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar, it sat alone in the sun, casting a shadow on the tarmac. Lockheed experts, clad in black T-shirts bearing a skunk logo, brought the wings out on large dollies.
Shortly after noon, a forklift raised the left wing to the level of the aircraft. And after some pushing and shoving, Lockheed fabrication mechanic Jeff Dutton stood on a yellow ladder and began working on the bolts that attach the wing to the body.
Dutton had spent months earlier this year helping to modify The Overachiever for the museum. He had done maintenance on F-117s before they were retired almost 20 years ago.
“Brings back memories,” he said as he stood in the aircraft’s shadow. “It really does. I loved working on the program.”
The wing bolts have to be tightened in just the right sequence, he said, marveling at the plane’s construction.
“You look at the structural integrity of the airplane, it is well built,” he said. “Well built.”
“I love this jet,” he said.
The post In broad daylight, Smithsonian readies a once-secret stealth fighter for debut appeared first on Washington Post.
