Reenacting Bombing Missions in an F-117 Nighthawk

Ride along on a Microsoft Flight Simulator journey through history in the world's first top-secret stealth aircraft.

Patrick Chovanec

Monday, April 15, 2024 at 01:06 PM ET

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F-117 Nighthawk in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. [Courtesy: Patrick Chovanec]

Key Takeaways:

The F-117 Nighthawk pioneered stealth technology, developed by Lockheed Skunk Works based on a Soviet mathematician's research, which emphasized minimizing radar return through an aircraft's unique shape rather than just its size.
Its distinctive design features included flat, angled surfaces, internal weapon bays, heat-shielded engines, and radar-absorbing coatings, making it a challenging but highly effective subsonic attack aircraft, primarily for covert night missions.
The F-117 demonstrated significant success with zero combat losses in the first Gulf War, though one aircraft was famously shot down during the 1999 Kosovo intervention, marking its only known combat loss.
Despite being retired in 2006 and replaced by newer stealth fighters, some F-117s are reportedly still flying for training exercises, highlighting its enduring legacy and remarkable operational record.

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Today on Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, I’m at Homey Airport (KXTA), also known as Groom Lake, aka “Area 51.” I’ve come here to the remote Nevada desert to fly one of the most iconic top secret aircraft of all time: the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter.

The story of the F-117 begins in 1964, when Soviet mathematician Pyotr Ufimtsev published the paper, Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction. It demonstrated that the radar return from an object depended more on its shape than size. Given the technology at the time, Ufimtsev’s insight was dismissed as impractical in Russia. But by the 1970s, given friendly aircraft losses to SAMs (surface-to-air missiles) in Vietnam and the Middle East, engineers at Lockheed’s “Skunk Works”—famous for designing cutting edge military planes like the P-38 Lighting, U-2 spy plane, and F-104 Starfighter—began taking the idea seriously.