COLONEL ZOLTAN RECALLED THE DOWNING OF THE FAMOUS F-117: “We didn’t know it was invisible, so we took it down in 18 seconds!”

It marks 27 years since the beginning of the NATO aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and on every anniversary, it is important to remember everything that marked the 78 days of bombing. “We didn’t know it was invisible” is one of the sentences that remains remembered, and on this occasion, Zoltan Dani, a retired air defense colonel and commander of the unit that shot down the “invisible” F-117—a unit that did not lose a single soldier during the aggression—spoke to Euronews Serbia.

As Dani said, it is important to talk about the topic of the NATO bombing, and those who survived it should pass it on so that it is not forgotten.

Regarding how his unit prepared for the defense of the skies over Yugoslavia, Dani says that certain preparations existed as early as a year before, because attacks were expected to start in October 1998.

“Then we monitored what was happening around us, regarding the deployment of their air forces, where a carrier of the Sixth Fleet entered the Adriatic Sea, and planes began to accumulate at surrounding airfields. We saw that the talks in Rambouillet did not yield results, and we saw that two days before that, the sky above us began to clear of civilian aviation. We expected it, we had a certain level of combat readiness, and we were maximally focused on carrying out the task expected of us,” he said.

As he added, they practiced using certain simulators, and the unit entered the month of March as a “well-prepared team.”

Regarding the famous downing of the “invisible” F-117, Dani says that he had previously studied the combat aircraft of both the Warsaw Pact and NATO, and that as early as the late eighties, information arrived that there was a plane with so-called “stealth” technology that was difficult to perceive, or rather, almost impossible to detect by radar.

“The solution was exactly in what stealth means. That abbreviation gave the answer – an aircraft of reduced radar visibility. If it is reduced, then it means it still is there, but something needs to be done. We had some assumptions about how that could end, and it turned out to be successful; we detected it in time with the surveillance radar, then we let it into our destruction zone, where we turned on the targeting radar, and very quickly it was detected and brought into the marker intersection. The system automatically calculated which commands should be sent to the missile so that it reaches that target in the air, and since it was already in the zone, I only had to say launch. Everything else finished in 18 seconds,” Dani recounted.

As he says, in those moments, the firing of missiles is heard, one after another, with a five-second difference. This shook the cabin they were in. The F-117 was shot down on March 27, 1999, at exactly 8:42 PM.

“It’s all about the nine people who must be there. We were completely ready to execute that task, and when that target appeared, I reported to the operations center and said that in my estimation, it was entering the destruction zone. Silence prevailed, only the humming in the cabin could be heard—the cabin is technology from the sixties and the fans that need to cool it—and only my command was listened to. Everything took place flawlessly and was very well practiced. We saw when the meeting of the missile and the target occurred, we saw when that little dot suddenly enlarged and when it started to fall down,” he said, adding that he did not even know it was the “invisible” one until the next day.

As Dani says, with the hit, they gained incredible momentum; there was no doubt about the need to defend.

“You have a very well-practiced crew where everyone works automatically, without thinking; it is lucky that the equipment was functional. We really didn’t know it was the invisible one. When they told me the next day, I said – bingo,” he says.

He adds that only one other stealth plane has been shot down, an F-115 three days ago in the war in the Middle East.

Speaking about the sentence that marked this event—”We didn’t know it was invisible”—Dani says that it is a fact, but also a joke that perhaps hit the other side hard.

“Our people have that sense to joke even in difficult times, and that is a point of pride for all of us who participated in all that, for the soldiers, for the residents; we managed to show that not everything is as they thought,” he said.

By the way, in 2011, Dani met Dale Zelko, the pilot who operated the F-117 aircraft.