Bats were the first visual proof I had that stealth really worked. We had deployed thirty-seven F-117As to the King Khalid Air Base, in a remote corner of Saudi Arabia, out of the range of Saddam’s Scuds, about 900 miles from downtown Baghdad. The Saudis provided us with a first-class fighter base with reinforced hangers, and at night the bats would come out and feed off insects. In the mornings we’d find bat corpses littered around our airplanes inside the open hangars. Bats used a form of sonar to “see” at night, and they were crashing blindly into our low-radar-cross-section tails.

After all those years of training, we certainly believed in the product, but it was nice having that kind of visual confirmation, nevertheless. On the night of D-day in Desert Storm, it fell on us to hit first. Most of us felt like fire-fighters about to test a flame-retardant shield by walking into a wall of fire. The so-called experts assured us that the suit worked, but we really wouldn’t know for sure until we made that fateful walk. As we suited up to fly into combat for the first time, one of the others pilots whispered to me.

“Well, I sure hope to God that stealth shit really works.”

Supplied by Craig Petch

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