Overachiever Gets her Ticket

Ground crews prepare to launch F-117 Stealth Fighters from Holloman Air Force Base, N.M. at the direction of the Secretary of Defense, William Perry, in response to an Iraqi missile attack against two F-16s flying over the northern no-fly zone. The 49th Fighter Wing F-117 Nighthawks were headed to Kuwait. By MSGT. Val Gempis. Published in Airman Magazine, November 1996. Exact Date Shot Unknown. 330-CFD-DF-ST-98-06090 Lockheed built a grand total of 64 F-117 Nighthawk airframes (5 YF-117A Scorpions, 59 operational F-117As) in the 1980s. Not a lot. Of those, one, 82-0806 (Something Wicked), was famously shot down over Belgrade in 1999, with her remains housed in assorted Serbian museums, while another six were lost to accidents between 1982 and 2008, when the type was retired. Since then, the Air Force has demilitarized four YF models and 12 F models for use as base gate guards or loaned to museums (seven of them on federally operated reservations), leaving an estimated 40 F-117…