Is this a photo of a crashed Senior Trend prototype at Area 51?

I was browsing the German partner site of dreamland resort and spotted this photo:



Ive never seen it before and am assuming its the Senior Trend prototype that crashed before takeoff at Area 51. Can anyone confirm this or give any extra info on the pic?

I believe that is YF-117A #783, which lost it's nose wheel dew to a problem around the time of landing. I don't have my book on the F-117 handy right now, so I can't check the number for you.

Tim

I know a HAVE BLUE prototype slammed down onto the runway on a landing attempt and lost its right gear (or it wouldnt descend).

I cant find any record of what you describe though.

Looks like a Photoshop image to me.

Think the aircraft was *803 which was involved in a landing incident at Holloman AFB back in 1997

I don't see how that's real. Look at the size of it compared to the men, it's much smaller than should be.

The plane that was damaged was F-117a #803.

From Air Safety Magazine published December 1997

Mishap No. 1 involved a wind gust, a less than optimum "aerobrake" (taken from the AFI 51-503 reports), and publications that were less than complete or explicit. The doughty aviator employed an aerobrake technique that foreshadowed the precise so that when the headwind hit on landing roll, the combined wind and aircraft energy was enough to propel the mishap aircraft about 100 feet in the air, much to the chagrin of the Mishap Pilot. There being no such thing as a free lunch, or in this case, free energy, the wind shifted to a tailwind and down goes the Nighthawk to the demise of the nose gear and much of the nose structure." The incident occured on Holloman's Runway 22.
The F-117A, assigned to 8th FS (other reliable sources say 9th FS) , was returning from a routine training mission, in conjunction with a local exercise, when at about 9 p.m. the mishap occurred. The mishap pilot was not injured, and ground egressed without incident. You can see by the photo that the pitot probes did in fact engage the BAK-12 cable at the departure end of the runway.

The aircraft was repaired at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale Calif., and returned to flying status in August 1998.

Here is a couple external images to gauge the size comparison of the aircraft to a person.

the shadows of the wings looks TOO SHARP too, it looks very fishy..and the way it crashed..

Give it a rest, people! Ther's nothing fishy about it.

It was a simple nose gear mishap at Holloman. It was among the most minor of all the F-117A accidents. SimonGray provided you with all the pertinent details. There is nothing left to discuss.

Looks like it turn out to be expensive for them wonder if the pilot was in the wrong or it was the plane

Thanks ajsr71 and simongray for the info.

It makes me laugh that people will shout photoshop without doing any research or for absurd reasons like "the shadows look too sharp" or "it looks too small compared to the people stood next to it".

My only concern is that it looks slightly recoloured. But either way its a great photo.

Of course the shadows look sharp, I'm sure they sharpened the photo before it was scanned. We're talking late 90's here, when film was still the predominant way of taking photos, and before digital cams were of any real quality for mainstream use. It's a safe bet that the photo was sharpened and the color was corrected. I worked as a graphic designer, my main job was prepping photos for print ads. It's such a common practice that I would imagine anyone here who's an amatuer photographer does it as step 2, right after 'open file'...

That's one expensive mistake... funny enough, it's something than happens to me once a week in my flight sim games...

that photo looks so photoshoped lol

Well ulshadow, do you not even have a reason for thinking its photoshoped? Give your reasons and i bet they can be disproved.

This is a real photo of a real event detailed above.

Originally posted by gfad

I cant find any record of what you describe though.

Nighthaw k: F-117 Stealth Fighter

Try the above link! It's for the book where I got the information on the YF-117 that lost it's nose gear. Sadly, you can't find the passage online, so you'll need a hard copy of the book to find the picture and its caption.

On a side note, if your intrested in the history of the F-117 Nighthawk, it's a really great book. I have a copy in my personal collection!

Tim

I got a quick question for you guys. When did they introduce the parachute to help slow the F-117A down during landings? I would think that this aircraft wouldn't reach the BAK-12 cable at the end of the runway if it had a parachute assisted landing. How long is the runway at Holloman AFB?
worldaerodata.com...
14000 or 15000 feet of runway(s) if you use the takeoff distance since they said the cable hit the pitot tubes.

I cannot see this aircraft skidding across the runway without the pilot pulling the parachute (if equipped at that time) and still needing the entire runway to stop. Even without the parachute this aircraft should stop alot sooner if it crashed into the runway as the caption states. If it was lifted about 100 feet by the gust of wind, on a landing roll, how much runway was lost? I don't know how to do the math on that, but if you got between 2-3 miles of landing area how can you not have enough room to stop? Do they mention the landing airspeed during this event or could we assume this from data available on the web?

Was this aircraft moved before this picture was taken? Skidmarks usually mean this pic was taken in an area that would be at an end of a runway, but which way are they facing in this pic? There are certain markings on the end of runways and there are none in the posted picture.
www.holloman.af.mil...
This shows what the area around the cable looks like at Holloman AFB. You will see the wheels on the BAK-12 cable. Wouldn't those leave marks on the F-117A if it would have ran into them, or shouldn't there be scrapes? That is if these cables with wheels were used then, and if this F-117A really hit the cable. Maybe my eyesight is bad and I can't see the cable marks.

What about the paint on the runway around the cables? Is that new and wasn't there back in 1992? Can the F-117A stretch the cable far enough for the paint markings to be out of view when it stopped after skidding over 2 miles across the runway?

I don't know what happened on that day with this F-117. I find it hard to believe the captions. Over 2 miles of runway, possible parachute to help slow down, and it still runs into the BAK-12 cable after crashing into the runway?

[edit on 2006912 by NJ Mooch]

Originally posted by NJ Mooch
I got a quick question for you guys. When did they introduce the parachute to help slow the F-117A down during landings? I would think that this aircraft wouldn't reach the BAK-12 cable at the end of the runway if it had a parachute assisted landing.

I don't really know for sure, but I believe the parachute was incorperated very earily in the program. In Ben Rich's book: Skunk Works, they mention that they were already aware of the incredibly fast landing speed back when they were testing the Have Blue aircraft. In fact, if I remember correctly, one of the reasons they reduced the sweep of the wings was to try slow down the landings for safety reasons.

As for what happened in the picure in question, I don't know! However, I have a guess: Could the chute have failed to deploy for sime reason? Perhaps the mechinism to open the doors jammed or something.

Tim

[edit on 13-9-2006 by ghost]

It depends on what he was doing during the accident. If he was doing touch and goes obviously he wouldn't deploy it. If he was doing full stop landings, returning to the end of the runway to take off again, he would only be required to deploy the chute on the final landing of the mission. Another regulation was that they only had to deploy the chute on the final landing, at a non-home station runway. So if he was landing at say Nellis, he'd have to use it, but at Holloman it would be up to the pilots discretion.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
It depends on what he was doing during the accident. If he was doing touch and goes obviously he wouldn't deploy it. If he was doing full stop landings, returning to the end of the runway to take off again, he would only be required to deploy the chute on the final landing of the mission. Another regulation was that they only had to deploy the chute on the final landing, at a non-home station runway. So if he was landing at say Nellis, he'd have to use it, but at Holloman it would be up to the pilots discretion.

Good Point! I never though about touch and go's. If he was doing them, he wouldn't have used the chute.

I also have one question about your post. You said at Holloman, it would be up to his discresion. That doesn't make sense to me. Barring a problem with the chute, or an unusually storng cross wind(which could entangle and damage the parachute), Why would Anyone want to land the Nighthawk without a drag chute?

Tim