The famous Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter was that rarest commodity in the American military arsenal -- a well-kept secret. Lockheed began development of the Stealth Fighter at its secret Skunk Works facility in 1976, and by 1977 had subscale-technology demonstrators flying under the code name Have Blue at the famous Area 51 proving grounds at Groom Dry Lake, Nevada.

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As with any radically new weapons system, the unavoidably expensive Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter inspired doubt as to its capabilities. Those doubts were erased during the Persian Gulf War, when Stealth fighters slipped through Iraqi radar and attacked their targets with impunity. See more classic airplane pictures.

Led by the late, great Ben Rich, engineers at the Skunk Works developed a formula for stealth by constructing an aircraft with flat surfaces placed at angles so that incoming radar beams are deflected away. (Kelly Johnson, the founding father of the Skunk Works, had stayed on as a consultant, and in his view, Ben's ideas simply would not work. Ben was delighted to be able to prove, for once, that his old boss was wrong.)

This faceted-plate construction technique, combined with the use of radar-absorbent materials and careful attention to the suppression of infrared signals, reduced the radar signature of the supersecret Stealth Fighter to the size of a marble. It was, quite literally, invisible to radar.

The first Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter prototype flew on June 18, 1981, piloted by Harold Farley, Jr., but the existence of the aircraft was not acknowledged by the Air Force until 1988. The need for secrecy stemmed from the unique nature of the F-117A's mission. It was to fly alone against the heaviest enemy defenses, and destroy key command and control centers, radars, and other vital targets with precision-guided munitions.

The term "stealth fighter" is really a misnomer, for the F-117A is purely an attack aircraft, and does not have the armament or the maneuverability to engage in dogfighting. The nature of the mission and the characteristics of the aircraft demanded extremely skilled, well-trained pilots, and competition for the chance to fly the Nighthawk was intense.

The aircraft was introduced into combat on December 19, 1989, in Operation Just Cause, the U.S. attack on Panama to capture President Manuel Noriega. When Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, the F-117As were called into action. Twenty-one Night­hawks flew from their Tonopah, Nevada, base to Langley Air Force Base, Virginia. From there, 18 of the aircraft made the 15-hour nonstop flight to King Khalid Air Base in Saudi Arabia, refueling seven times en route.

Aviation Stealth and the Birth of Stealth Fighters There have been attempts at aviation stealth since the First World War, when the Germans attempted to cover some aircraft with Cellon, a clear, cellophanelike material. It did not work -- the clear panels reflected the sun even better than painted ones. Other attempts at stealth included mufflers for engines, camouflage, and even an array of lights mounted on the wings and fuselage of a World War II Consolidated B-24, intended to make it "invisible" against a light background. But radar, which tracks aircraft by reflected radio waves, became the biggest threat. The answer, ironically, was found by Lockheed's Denys Overholser, who read an obscure paper by a Soviet scientist, Pyotr Ufimtsev. Overholser and Bill Schroeder used the paper as a basis for creating a computer program "ECHO I" which showed how "faceting" would give an airplane stealth characteristics. The Stealth Fighter was born.

Keep reading to learn more about the Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter, and to check out specifications for this airplane.

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