Shooting Down the Stealth Fighter: Eyewitness Accounts from Those Who Were There [Hardcover]

...a good addition to your library if youre looking for a single reference source that explains how radars work, how the SA3 was developed and evolved, how missile guidance systems function, how the US stealth program was based on ideas published by an obscure Soviet engineer in 1962, and how the F117 was designed.  The Journal of the Air Force Historical FoundationWith its futuristic and unmistakable design, the Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk, the so-called Stealth Fighter, was the wonder of the age. Virtually undetectable by radar, this ground-attack aircraft could slip unseen through enemy defenses to deliver its deadly payload on unsuspecting targets. Its effectiveness had been well demonstrated during the Gulf War of 1991, during which the F-117A achieved almost legendary status. But, at 20.42 hours on 27 March 1999, the military and aviation worlds were stunned when the impossible happened  a virtually obsolete Soviet-built surface-to-air missile system which had first been developed more than thirty years earlier, detected and shot down an F-117A, callsign Vega 31.This incident took place during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War. It was, and remains, at least officially, the only time that a stealth aircraft was detected and shot down by a ground-based missile system.In this book the authors, both of whom served in the Kosovo War, take the reader through every moment of that astounding event, from both the perspective of Lieutenant Colonel Danis 3rd Battalion, 250th Air Defence Missile Brigade, a Yugolsav Army unit, and that of the pilot of the F-117A, Lieutenant Colonel Darrell Patrick Zelko, who ejected and survived the loss of his aircraft. The reader is placed in the cabin of the missile fire control centre and alongside Dale Zelko in the cockpit of his stealth fighter as each second dramatically unfolds.Stealth characteristics are now regarded as a standard part of modern military aircraft design but with each generation of airl#g