"It will crash in our yard": US F-117 bomber was shot down in the village of Budjanovci during NATO aggression

Photo: Zoran Jovanovic; Profimedia/Alamy, Private archive

On this day in 1999, the 250th Air Defense Brigade shot down the "invisible," i.e., stealth F-117A bomber. The whole of Serbia was shouting at the time: "Sorry, we had no idea it was invisible!"

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On the anniversary of the shooring down of the pride of the US Air Force, the locals in the peaceful Srem village still remember the event that kept them awake all night, writes the portal distrikt.rs.

"I say to my grandfather, 'Oh no, it will crash into our yard'," recounts a resident of Budjanovaci who remembers the warplane crashing as if it were yesterday.

And it did, smack in the middle of Zoran Bozic's field. A symbol of power and indestructability ended up ingloriously in the Srem plain, thanks to the skill of our Air Defense. And then the locals began to arrive, rejoicing that the miracle of technology had been destroyed, a plane that until then had been considered invisible to radars.

"It was like we were at the Red Star Stadium. It shone like that. There was a red-hot ball in the sky. Everyone who watched later said that it looked like it was going to fall onto them directly. That's what it looked like to me at that moment," says Slavoljub Jovanovic.

Locals celebrate on the remains of the F-117 shot down in Budjanovci; Photo: Profimedia

"It looked like a comet coming for us. None of us knew at that moment what was flying and what was crashing," says one neighbor, who was enlisted at the time.

Zoran Jovanovic, who was three and a half years old then, did not know either. The picture that shows him standing on one of the wings of a previously powerful plane with three fingers raised, a traditional Serbian symbol representing victory, went around the world.

"They dressed me, put a plastic gun in my hand, and then they showed me how to raise my hand with three fingers and stand on the wing of the plane. That's how this picture was made," says Zoran who doesn't remember anything himselfs, but keeps the newspaper in which his photo appeared.

Everyone wanted to take pictures, jump on parts of the plane, dance on it, or tear off a part off as a souvenir, but a local man, Svetislav, then had another idea.

"I went looking for the pilot. That was my wish. However, there was an older man with military experience who told me to let go of that idea. Afterwards, I heard that the pilot had ejected and landed three kilometers away, and that they came for him and took him away," says Slavoljub.

The remains of the plane nicknamed "the Night Hawk", which gained its combat reputation in Iraq, during the first Gulf War in 1991, when it flew 1,270 sorties unnoticed,over Iraqi radars, are now exhibits at the Military and Aviation Museum in Belgrade, while the site of its crash, a meadow in Budjanovaci, has become a place many visit on the anniversary of the day it was shot down in Serbia, March 27.

(Telegraf.rs)