It is March 27th, 1999 the quiet nightfall in the Serbian countryside near Buđanovci gets broken by the thunderous screech of the NATO aircrafts descending from the North, in fact, those nights in the former Yugoslavian Federal Republic are everything except quiet: the NATO has been bombing the country for three days. Covered by their stealth capabilities, American pilots are confident on accomplishing the mission and returning intact to their base. But tonight, Lieutenant Colonel Zoltan Dani, commander of the 250th missile battery, near Belgrade, has something different in mind.
Let’s put us in context. The first stage of the NATO-Yugoslavian war was the suppression of the Yugoslavian anti-air defenses, for this purpose, the US Air Force is using the F-117 Nighthawk. Being a very shape-recognizable aircraft, the F-117 owes its curious aerodynamics to its main feature: the radar undetectability. For days, NATO has bombed the YRF with impunity due to Yugoslavian’s antiquate weapons with soviet-era radars that were unable to detect the enemy planes, in theory at least.
On the other hand, Lieutenant Colonel Dani was a professional of his labor. Since the first bombing, he had summited his crew to a strict routine of hiding and radar operating tactics, making themselves almost impossible to get hit by the US Air Force, for example by limiting the use of the locking radar for only 20 seconds and two uses.
As said before, that night everything was different. Dani was early adverted by their spies in Italy that a bombing run was going on that night too. Once the rangefinder radar detected the planes inside their “kill-range”, the lock-on radar was activated, finding nothing in the first two runs but, in this case, Dani ordered a third attempt against his own rules, feeling lucky about their possibilities. And lucky he was, because in that exact time, the F-117, piloted by Dale Zelko, opened its bomb bay, increasing the low F-117’s radar cross section and the missile launcher got the lock on it. Two Sa-3 missiles flown into the night, one of them hitting the plane with its shrapnel. Luckily, Zelko ejected and was later rescued that night.
While NATO forces spent days trying unsuccessfully to locate the missile battery, a series of propagandistic posters saying “Sorry we didn’t know it was invisible” and an image of the F-117 were found on almost every street in Buđanovci. For their achievement Dani was ascended to Colonel and every of his crew was promoted one rank.
Years after the war ended, Zelko and Dani met each other and now them and their families are friends. The wreckage of the plane is currently exhibited in Tesla’s Museum in Serbia.
