On the evening of March 27, 1999, a Serb surface-to-air missile (SAM) with 1970s technology blew one of the United States’ most advanced fighter jets out of the sky, and shattered the common belief that the Stealth F-117A Nighthawk was invisible.
The radar-evading aircraft that crashed near Budjanovci, a village northwest of the Serbian capital of Belgrade, was the first F-117 to be lost in combat. An Air Force special operations helicopter rescue force was scrambled from a forward staging area in Tuzla, Bosnia, to conduct a combat search and rescue (CSAR) mission for the pilot. The helicopters flew into one of the world’s deadliest integrated air defense systems. Their mission: to pick up Lieutenant Colonel Darrell Zelko, who had ejected from his crippled aircraft and landed in a field about ten miles from Batajnica Airfield, Yugoslavia’s primary Mikoyan-Gurevich (MiG) fighter base. The downed pilot landed within a few miles of three Serb Army brigades. His next duty was to avoid becoming a prisoner of war (POW).
Capturing Zelko, an F-117 pilot who had bombed Baghdad during the Gulf War, would have had the effect of throwing cold water on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) air campaign at a critical stage, because the propaganda value of parading the "Mother of All POWs" before cameras in Belgrade would have been incalculable.
We may never know how close the Serbs came to capturing Zelko, but they certainly had a lot more time than they should have had, thanks to a series of Allied mistakes.
U.S. rescue helicopters didn’t have the necessary secret codes to communicate with British air controllers aboard a NATO E-3 Sentry, an airborne early warning aircraft in the area, that had monitored Zelko’s call for help before and after he ejected from his crippled aircraft.
As a result, precious time was lost while rescuers sorted out at least a half-dozen sets of false coordinates for the location of "Vega 31," the tactical call sign of the downed Stealth pilot.
The British weren’t the only ones listening to the guard frequency that pilots use in emergencies like this. The Serbs were also listening to the non-secure radio frequency, and were able to triangulate the radio signals they received and send ground forces to the general area where the Stealth pilot landed in his parachute.
As the Serbs closed in on the survivor, the rescue force – finally with correct coordinates in hand – flew in heavy rain and poor visibility into the teeth of the Serbs’ surface-to-air missile defense.
When the Stealth pilot’s infrared strobe failed to work, the commander of the helicopter rescue force asked the downed airman to ignite a military flare he carried in his survival vest. It was only then that the helicopter crews were able to precisely locate the pilot. Unfortunately, the flare also gave away Vega 31’s location to Serb soldiers with search dogs who were unloading from trucks on a nearby road.
Only through good fortune did the pilot escape being discovered by a search dog that sniffed the ground about twenty-five yards from where he was hunkered down in a drainage ditch.
Marking the bright spot on the ground, the pilot of an MH-60G Pave Hawk helicopter dropped vertically into a plowed field about 100 feet from where the pilot was hiding – the first time such a daring maneuver had been attempted in darkness under combat conditions.
Within seconds, two highly trained and motivated parajumpers, or PJs as they are called, rushed to the side of the downed pilot and quickly escorted him to the waiting helicopter for a flight to freedom.
The men who fly the Black Jets do not think of them as invisible, but successes during the Persian Gulf War had caused some of them to think of the F-117s as invulnerable. They know better now. Given the right conditions, Stealth jets can be seen – and can be shot down by a surface-to-air missile. The Air Force also learned a valuable lesson.
For the first and only time during the air campaign, the Stealth fighters were sent into Serbia without EA-6B Prowlers that can jam enemy radars and also collect vital information about their location and operating parameters for pilots who are trying to avoid being shot down by surface-to-air missiles. Other aircraft like F-16CJs that carry high-speed anti-radiation missiles (HARMs), to knock out SAM sites, were also held outside the target area in central Serbia on the fourth night of the air campaign.
There were official explanations for the tactical error.
Colonel Daniel "Doc" Zoerb, the Air Force officer who headed up the "Red Team," the official U.S. Air Force investigation of the shootdown for the Air Combat Command, says the HARM shooters and EA-6B electronic jammers were diverted to counter another threat that developed while the F-117s were en route to the target from Aviano Air Base in Italy.
Lieutenant General Wally Moorehead, one of the original cadre of Stealth pilots, says the decision to send F-117s into the Belgrade area without support aircraft was deemed an acceptable risk by Lieutenant General Michael Short, the highest ranking Stealth pilot in the Air Force, who ran NATO’s air campaign against Yugoslavia. Stealth aircraft had flown solo missions against Iraqi targets during the Persian Gulf War, and Short saw no reason why they couldn’t do it again.
But General Short concedes he made a tactical blunder, and now accepts major responsibility for the first combat loss of a Stealth aircraft.
In a private interview at his home in the Tidewater area of Virginia on the second anniversary of the air campaign, Short said he did not have a complete picture of what was happening in Serbia at the time he agreed to move his HARM shooters and jammers upcountry. Short says he did something no general in his position should have done, and that was to get down on the tactical level of the war.
"The last thing you ought to be doing is making tactical decisions at the operational level of the war," said Short, who added, "That’s where guys like me make mistakes, when they start making tactical decisions that alter what the kids are doing out there."
Short understood the grand scheme of the air war. He dictated what would happen, but he didn’t sit at the table of the four-ship briefing when the aircrews decided how they were going to carry out his air tasking order (ATO) of going in, feinting to the left, and then coming back.
"You can see enough to get the big picture, but I didn’t feel like I had enough to give tactical guidance based on what I could see," said Short.
Moorehead, the Vice Commander of United States Air Forces Europe, agreed. "It was the wrong offensive play to run against a stubborn defense that was constantly changing," said Morehead.
After Colonel Zoerb and his team of experts briefed General Michael Ryan, USAF chief of staff, on what happened, Ryan ordered a team of F-117 pilots, who flew against Serb targets, to rewrite the textbook on Stealth tactics. The Air Force is now sharing information, about the strengths as well as weaknesses of Stealth aircraft, with military units who need to know, so there are no more snafus like the one that occurred over Serbia on the fourth night of the NATO air campaign.
Ross W. Simpson
The Associated Press
Washington, D.C., June 13, 2001
Ross W. Simpson is a network radio correspondent for The Associated Press who has covered military affairs since the infamous Cuban Missile Crisis that brought the U.S. to the brink of war with the Soviet Union, to the invasion of Panama, the Gulf War, and U.S. intervention in Somalia and Haiti. His coverage has won almost every major broadcast award including the coveted Edward R. Murrow Award in 1995 for his coverage in Haiti and again in 2002 for his spot coverage of the 9/11 attack in 2001. Simpson is the author of three previous books, including Invasion: The American Destruction of the Noriega Regime in Panama; The Fires of 88; and Maryland, A Photographic Celebration. He lives with his wife in Haymarket, Virginia.
