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Former US Air Force pilot Charlie “Tuna” Heinlein admitted that artillery and missile units from the Yugoslav Army Air Force and Air Defense struck another F-117A during the 1999 NATO assault.
According to Slavisa Golubovic and Zoran Vukosavljevic, Serbian rocket launchers who knew about this case before and investigated it thoroughly, the third F-117A was probably hit. His many years of gathering information from various sources and assembling mosaics on extraordinary success, before the entire 3rd Missile Division, have more interesting details in the “Nighthawks” shooting. One of them is that, they believe, Heinlein actually flew the struck plane, according to the Tango Six portal.
According to Slaviša Golubović, retired colonel of Air Defense artillery and missile units, author of the book “Fall of the Night Falcon” and commander of the battery to guide missiles in the famous 3rd Missile Division, the “reconnaissance” of Heinlein is not a surprise to him:
– A total of 25 F-117A aircraft from Wing 49 of Holoman Air Base in New Mexico participated in Operation Allied Force during NATO’s attack on the FRY in 1999. The decision to base both in Germany was made on 1 April 1999, so both squadrons were already at Spandalem air base on April 4, 1999. Every day, they participated in combat operations in FRY territory, in two waves, starting from 20.00 to 23.00 and from 00.00 to 03.00.
Lieutenant Colonel Heinlein flew on a mission shortly before midnight on April 29, and after a successful tanker (KC-135 over Hungary) he found himself in FRY airspace around 02.15 on April 30, with the task of shooting at a telecommunications facility in the wider Frushka Gora region. It approached the object of action from the southeast. He was in the destruction zone of the 3rd Missile Division of the 250th Air Defense Regiment, which was in the area of Petrovčić village in Srem that night, around 2:46 a.m. At that time, the combat service of the 3rd Air Defense Command was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Boško Dotlić, deputy commander of the Background Division. According to the prescribed procedure, two rockets (“Jagodinka” and “Slavujka”) were fired at the aircraft which was in the destruction zone at the time. It was hit by the first rocket at a distance of about 17 km and an altitude of about 7 km. The missile’s impact did not cause any vital damage, so the plane continued its flight into Hungarian airspace to refuel and return to the air base.
Given that it is not an airplane, but an airplane that at that time was expected to be anything but detected and tracked by radar, and less shot down, some details that Lieutenant Colonel Heinlein affirms in the text must be analyzed. First, from the aspect of the action of the Yugoslav Army.
The F-117A aircraft used in Operation Allied Force did not fly at altitudes below 20,000 feet (6,000 m). This means that units armed with NEVA and KUB missile systems could fire at them. On April 30, units of the 250th Air Defense Regiment armed with the NEVA missile system were deployed in the wider Belgrade region. Accurate data on fire actions on April 29 and 30 confirm that the action on the target was carried out by the 3rd Air Defense Squadron at 02.46, launching two rockets, one of which hit and damaged the target, and the other continued flying obliquely for lack of intervention. During the tracking and guiding of the first rocket towards the target, the combat service stated that the aircraft was performing a maneuver that was not usual and that it resembled the so-called “snake maneuver”, which is not actually possible for this aircraft. The computer-controlled maneuver, which Heinlein claims in its statement, caused a slight change in the plane’s radar reflective surface, which the companion systems of the missile guidance station recorded as a change in the radar’s reflective energy center. . This eventually led to the rocket being activated near the plane so that it did not inflict vital damage. – says Golubović for Tango Six.
Furthermore, he emphasizes that this incident has already been written about in Warren Thomson’s 2000 book “Bandits Over Baghdad”. Heinlein claims that his colleague’s damaged plane continued its flight into Hungarian airspace to refuel, noting significant visible damage at the time of the first refueling attempt:
– If the damage is really significant, then it is not logical that such a plane would have Spandalem airbase quite far from Hungary as its final destination. In such situations, permission is required to land at the nearest “friendly” airport, such as Pleso in Zagreb, which was discussed above. The suspicion is backed up by allegations that the plane was lost after the sinking, but that the two were together again at Spandalem Air Force Base.
Heinlein received recognition from DFC for the effort and effort to successfully tank his badly damaged colleague’s plane and return it to the airbase. It should be noted that this recognition is the highest recognition that a pilot can receive in his career as a pilot and that it was received for exceptional results. If Heinlein received it for the effort and effort to return the damaged plane to the airbase, what credit should the pilot of the damaged plane have received? The answer probably lies in the assumption that Heinlein was the pilot of the crashed plane and not his colleague. – Golubović concludes and states that three “Nighthawks” were hit. One in the Museum, one of which we now have confirmation, which Golubović says was probably spent and transferred to New Mexico in a container, but also another whose hit and damage, as he puts it, will probably only be talked about and written about. .
Zoran Vukosavljevic, a former noncommissioned officer in the artillery and missile units of the Yugoslav army, confirms the accusations of his colleague Golubovic and draws attention to the fact that the second hit of the F-117A was written in various Western sources that he, such as Golubovic, collected for years:
– This event was also mentioned in the book “Air War over Serbia 1999” by Bojan Dimitrijević and Jovica Draganić, but without further explanation, only as information that on April 30, the F-117 landed in Špandal. “Queue damage” is quoted from “various sources”. In his book “Aggression by NATO, the Air Force and Air Defense in the Defense of the Fatherland”, General Spasoje Smiljanic writes the following: “It is written, but it is also true, that the administration of the Air Force of the The United States, with the exception of the downed F-117A, immediately after the attack on the FRY spent 2 more F-117A planes “.
As for the American and Western sources, I will start with an article from the digital archive of the Atalanta daily “ACJ”. This is an article from page 14 of the May 6, 1999 issue. According to these allegations, the incident described took place on April 30, 1999. This date appeared several times in various sources. Describes an F-117A aircraft that was damaged by a “surface-to-air missile.” The plane is claimed to be “nearly invisible to radars” but may have been aimed optically under “full moon light.” The plane, they claim, managed to land on a base in Germany.
Another source is from the British aviation magazine “Air Forces Monthly”, which talks about and describes the course of the air war in the period 16.04.1999. to 05.11.1999. Over the FRY, air defense systems were affected, VJ planes and helicopters were destroyed on the ground and in the air, but also NATO planes and drones were hit and shot down. It points out that on April 30, 1999. year, an F-117A of the 49th FW Spandalem, damaged by an SA-3 missile (US designation for the S-125 Neva system) that exploded near the aircraft and the aircraft lost “part of the tail section “but managed to go back and land on the base.
I za kraj, tu je i treći izvor, koji je danas teško dostupan, a radi se or pisanom referatu-izveštaju pukovnika američke vojske Everesta E. Rićonija. U svom referatu pod nazivom: „Description of our failed acquisition system, exemplified by the history, nature and analysis of the USAF F-22 Raptor program; A national tragedy: military and economic “iz 8. marta 2005. godine on kaže:„ This event, which occurred during the Kosovo conflict on March 27, was a severe blow to the United States Air Force. The plane was special: an F-117 Nighthawk stealth bomber that should have been nearly invisible to Serbian air defenses. And this was certainly not a fluke: a few nights later, Serbian missiles damaged a second F-117. “- kaže za Tango Six Vukosavljević.
(Kurir.rs/Tangosix.rs, P.Vojinovic)
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