Three former U.S. Air Force Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk pilots will be presenting about their careers and their experiences in the cockpit of one of the most secretive aircraft in history on Thursday, October 17, at 7 p.m. as part of the EAA Aviation Museum Aviation Adventure Speaker Series.
Col. Al Whitley, Col. Ralph Getchell, and Col. Greg Gonyea will recount their experience at the controls of what became known as the “stealth fighter,” the first operational aircraft designed around stealth technology. Designed by Lockheed’s legendary Skunk Works division, the F-117 was an ultra-secret black project for years, and the proof-of-concept demonstrators, codenamed Have Blue, and prototype YF-117As were initially tested at Groom Lake in Nevada, colloquially known as “Area 51.” Although Groom Lake was suitable for testing, it was not large enough for an operational group and further testing of operational F-117As and pilot training began at another remote Air Force base in Nevada: Tonopah Test Range Airport. The Nighthawks would operate at Tonopah through the 1980s.
The F-117 was officially unveiled to the public in 1988, seven years after first flying in 1981. Its first mission came in the United States’ invasion of Panama in 1989, before it played a large role in the bombing of Baghdad in the 1991 Gulf War.
Although the F-117 is designated a fighter, technically it’s a ground-attack aircraft as its primary objective is to drop bombs on ground targets with ultra precision. As a stealth aircraft, the Nighthawk was designed so that it would have an incredibly small radar cross section, but that meant lower engine thrust due to losses in the inlet and outlet, a very low wing aspect ratio, and high sweep angle needed to deflect incoming radar waves to the sides. With no afterburner (to reduce infrared signature), the F-117 was limited to subsonic speeds.
Because of its limitations in this regard and the need for its stealth capability to be preserved at all costs, missions in the F-117 were designed around extremely precise timing and no radio contact between pilots.
Whitley, a Vietnam War veteran who flew the F-100 Super Sabre and A-7 Corsair II in Southeast Asia and would later become the first pilot to accumulate 1,000 hours in the new A-10 Thunderbolt II, was part of the initial group of pilots brought into the F-117 program in 1980.
“I had no more than hardly finished my training in the A-10 when I got this phone call out of nowhere. I guess it was about December, I got the phone call around December of ’80,” Whitley explained. “It was our first commander of what became the stealth fighter wing, a guy by the name of Burner Bob Jackson. He was the first commander of the first unit that was called the 4450th Tactical Group. In retrospect, when he talked to me, he couldn’t really tell me anything, and it was like a five-minute meeting. This guy calls me, he says, ‘I’d like to meet you at Nellis Air Force Base at the Visiting Officers Quarters, room such and such on this date at this time.’ So, I show up there on that date, at that room, at that time. I knock on the door. The door opens about two or three inches, and this voice says, ‘Are you Whitley?’ I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ He says, ‘Let me see your ID card.’ I don’t know what’s going on the other side of the door.
“I slip him my ID card. He opens the door and says, ‘Come on in.’ Seriously, it was no more than 10 minutes. He said, ‘Look, I can’t tell you what you’d be committing to, but we’ve got a unique opportunity that will allow you to stay here in the Las Vegas area, and all I can tell you is that you’re going to be flying airplanes and it’s going to be quite a challenge. You want to sign on or not?’ He said, ‘You can’t go home and think about it. You can’t go home. You can’t get on the phone and talk to your wife. I need your decision.’ I said, ‘Sign me up.’ Really, he did that with a number of people. Not just from Nellis, but for whatever reason, I was one of the few who were part of the initial cadre, if you will.”
Under the guise of running avionics tests and evaluations for A-7 weapon systems, pilots recruited into the F-117 program were actually using the A-7 as a trainer for the F-117 because its cockpit layout and avionics were considered similar to the Nighthawk. In 1982, operational F-117As were first delivered to Tonopah, and on October 15 of that year, Whitley, then a major, became the first operational Air Force pilot to fly the stealth fighter.
“I was the first guy,” he said. “I checked out the second guy. And he and I checked out the third guy. The three of us checked out the fourth and fifth guy. And at some point, we had enough that we could start moving some to the location [Tonopah] that we would call home, eventually.”
Whitley would eventually become the commander of the 37th Tactical Fighter Wing in 1990, which absorbed the 4450th Tactical Group.
Meanwhile, it wasn’t until the late 1980s that Getchell and Gonyea would join the F-117 program.
Getchell flew A-7s and F-16s prior to his assignment to the 4450th Tactical Group at Tonopah in August 1988. He served as assistant deputy commander for operations, chief standardization/evaluation division, and was the commander of the 415th Tactical Squadron. During his tour as commander of the Nightstalkers, the squadron participated in Operation Just Cause in Panama and deployed to Saudi Arabia for Operation Desert Shield. During Operation Desert Storm, he flew a total of 19 combat missions in the F-117.
Gonyea flew F-4s and F-15s prior to his selection for the F-117 program at Tonopah in November 1988. He became squadron commander of the 416th Tactical Fighter Squadron Ghostriders in 1990, and he along with the squadron was deployed to Saudi Arabia for Operation Desert Storm. Gonyea flew 21 combat missions during the Gulf War.
For Getchell and Gonyea, who flew high-performance, supersonic fighter jets prior to the F-117, it was an interesting transition going to a subsonic, bulky jet that relied on unproven technology at the time. During their missions in the Gulf War, precision was paramount.
“The whole idea of flying the airplane is to be flying it as precisely as possible, and there’s this certain mindset that you have to get in that you had an airplane that does not have the ability to communicate in the combat zone,” Getchell said. “So, when you get into the bad guy territory you suck in the antennas, and you’re on your own. You can’t hear AWACS [airborne warning and control system]. You can’t talk to AWACS. You can’t see the other guys that are in the attack. The success of an attack, which usually involves multiple airplanes, is everybody from square one being exactly where they’re supposed to, when they’re supposed to be there, doing what they’re supposed to be doing.”
Despite the fact that the F-117 was supposed to be nearly invisible to radar, did that mean that squadron commanders like Getchell and Gonyea were confident that it would work heading into the war?
“Absolutely not,” Gonyea said. “I was a squadron commander, and I led the second wave. Getchell led the first wave. Off the tanker I had stealthed up. We all went to Baghdad, but we were the only ones. I’m looking out the window, and all I can see is this bubbling cauldron of tracers. And I looked down at my map, and I’m thinking F-111s must be bombing some airfields and it is just shooting the heck out of them. Well I unfold my map, and it’s Baghdad. I’m up high, just cruising in, and I’m going, ‘How in the hell can any airplane fly through that?’ … Even if everybody’s screwed up, I can’t turn around because what do I tell the guy’s wife if he gets shot down? So I said, ‘It doesn’t matter what, I’m going.’”
After successfully completing his first mission in the F-117, Gonyea met back up with the rest of the squadron and was exhilarated to find out that all of the pilots and aircraft under his command were unharmed.
“The first mission, we were all elated that we all came back. It was not uncommon for guys here to say, ‘Man, I hope this stealth stuff works. We may lose 50 percent of our airplanes.’ That was a common theme going on.”
Thursday’s event is free for EAA members and just $5 for nonmembers.