Overachiever Gets her Ticket
Ground crews prepare to launch F-117 Stealth Fighters from Holloman Air Force Base, N.M. at the direction of the Secretary of Defense, William Perry, in response to an Iraqi missile attack against two F-16s flying over the northern no-fly zone. The 49th Fighter Wing F-117 Nighthawks were headed to Kuwait. By MSGT. Val Gempis. Published in Airman Magazine, November 1996. Exact Date Shot Unknown. 330-CFD-DF-ST-98-06090
Lockheed built a grand total of 64 F-117 Nighthawk airframes (5 YF-117A Scorpions, 59 operational F-117As) in the 1980s.
Not a lot.
Of those, one, 82-0806 (Something Wicked), was famously shot down over Belgrade in 1999, with her remains housed in assorted Serbian museums, while another six were lost to accidents between 1982 and 2008, when the type was retired.
Since then, the Air Force has demilitarized four YF models and 12 F models for use as base gate guards or loaned to museums (seven of them on federally operated reservations), leaving an estimated 40 F-117 airframes in inventory, stored and maintained in Type 1000 recallable storage or used at the Tonopah Test Range Airport in Nevada as “red air” adversary aggressors to train U.S. pilots against stealth targets, and for use as testbeds for radar and sensor development as stand-ins for stealthy cruise missiles. Lockheed is supporting this aging fleet of ‘Hawks through 2034.
Since 2021, the USAF has disposed of about four stored F-117 airframes per year.
The latest to get her retirement papers is 85-0818 (The Overachiever), which lived up to her moniker as she flew in all four major conflicts in which Nighthawks flew combat operations: Operation Just Cause (Panama, 1989), Desert Storm (1991, Gulf War), Allied Force (1999, Yugoslavia), and Iraqi Freedom (2003).
During her 1991 participation in Desert Storm, Overachiever flew 1,271 sorties alone, achieving an 80 percent mission success rate while suffering no battle damage.
Catching a ride earlier this month in an equally rare C-5M Super Galaxy (52 in existence) from the Air Force Reserve’s 512th Airlift Wing, Overachiever will be displayed at the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, which logs more than a million visitors each year.
Airmen assigned to the Air Force Reserve’s 512th Airlift Wing pose with personnel from Lockheed Martin, Air & Space Forces Magazine, and the Smithsonian Institution for a photo in front of a wingless F-117A Nighthawk before loading it into a C-5M Super Galaxy in Palmdale, Calif., Oct. 5, 2026. The demilitarization process that qualifies an aircraft for museum display requires close cooperation between the War Department and its industry partner. Credit: Air Force Staff Sgt. Alexis Morris VIRIN: 261005-F-LI355-9871
And via Lockheed, reassembled and display-ready:
