With the appearance of this video, it seems the final chapter in Black Jet’s life has not yet been written
Taken on Jul. 26, 2018 the interesting footage in this post shows two F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighters flying over Nevada.
According the video description, the aircraft, callsigns Night 17 and 19, departed and tanked with Sierra 98 (KC-135 from Fairchild AFB). Night 17 then flew a test mission while Night 19 returned to the Tonopah Test Range.
Noteworthy it’s been 10 years since the F-117 Nighthawk officially retired.
In fact, the last F-117s left Holloman AFB on Apr. 22, 2008 with a stop at their birthplace in Palmdale, California, before ending up in their final resting place where their historic journey began in 1981 – Tonopah Test Range, Nevada. The aircraft were placed in Type 1000 storage in the event they were ever called back into duty (actually there have been many reported sightings and pictures of the aircraft flying in the Nellis Bombing Range where some of the aircraft were flown periodically…).
By April 2016, lawmakers appeared ready to “remove the requirement that certain F-117 aircraft be maintained in a condition that would allow recall of those aircraft to future service,” which would move them from storage to the aerospace maintenance and regeneration yard in Arizona to be scavenged for hard-to-find parts, or completely disassembled.
On Sep. 11, 2017, it was reported that in accordance with the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, signed into law on Dec. 23, 2016, “the Air Force will remove four F-117s every year to fully divest them — a process known as demilitarizing aircraft…”
But now, with the appearance of this video, it seems the final chapter in Black Jet’s life has not yet been written.
Artwork courtesy of AircraftProfilePrints.com
