STEALTH FIGHTER MOTHBALLED

April 23, 2008

Palmdale, CA:

The last four F117-A Stealth Fighters flew off this early afternoon on their final mission; retirement. This mission was not quite the secret as those in its illustrious past. A small crowd of onlookers istood outside the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works facility in Palmdale and watched as the famous aircraft flew off into the east one by one. Their final destination is an airbase located in the Nevada desert. The aircraft is being mothballed to make way for its younger sibling, the F22 Raptor.

64 aircraft built total, the F117, also known as the Night Hawk, began its service in the USAF, October 1983. Its role solely that of ground assault, the Night Hawk has served in every US military conflict from the Gulf War in 1991 to both the 2001 war in Afghanstan and Operation Iraqi Freedom 2003. Its pilots can boast an excellent record for targets destroyed to a loss of just one....Just ONE aircraft.

One other distinction the F117 holds is the single-seat fighter flight record, flying from Holoman AFB in Alamogordo, NM to Kuwait. The trip took 18.5 hours.

For those of you that might still want to catch a glimpse of the Night Hawk, it will not stealth out of history entirely. There will be several still on display. One at Nellis AFB in Nevada, another at the National Museum of the Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio.

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