Stealth fighter over Ireland?

Catweasel

Strage one but I'll put it out there to see.....

I saw something the other day about the stealth fighter and it reminded me of something which happened many years ago....early nineties probably. On a clear summer evening I saw a delta/flying wing type aircraft flying through the sky. It was in Munster, the aircraft was flyng at a relatively middle to low altitude i.e not airliner altitude, and flying reasonably slowly (i.e. not thundering past).

Now this was probably twenty years ago so I don't remember details exactly but I remember thinking at the time how unusual it was - it didn't appear to by a glider or model or anything like that but a real airplane like nothing I had ever seen in the sky. It probably looked most like a B2 or F117.

I know I saw this - not a dream or anything like that - just wondering if it is possible that it was a B2 or F117 over Irish airspace in the early - mid nineties or must there be another explanation?

Thanks for any info

Eiriu

It might have been for an airshow or something

bluecode

It could be for an airshow. The F117 did visit British airshows once or twice. Really it's hard to be definitive unless you could actually identify it exactly. Also of course they would have been deployed to the UK at times.

It could simply have been a visitor to an Irish airshow on it's way home or back, something like a Mirage or Draken or anything with a delta wing.

If you could narrow down the date a bit that might help but otherwise we're guessing.

wildfowler94

Dave is that you?:rolleyes:

Catweasel

Definitely not a Mirage or Draken. I was into planes in my youth so would have recognised a conventional delta wing. This was more of a flying V shaped wing - the F117 fits the description quite well, though as this was 15 -20 years ago, I can't be sure.

I see that he F117 didn't become public knowledge until the early 90s so I probably not into planes as much by then so I would not have
recognised a stealth fighter at the time.

I guess that it was approximately heading towards Shannon from the South West (very approximately)

KickstartHeart

During the gulf war?

Voltex

Vulcan?

Catweasel

Can't be certain but would be fairly certain it was after the Gulf War.

As for a Vulcan, maybe but probably not as I would probably have recognised a Vulcan and they were retired by that stage.

This was probably mid nineties so unfortunately can't remember much more, though I seem to recall that it didn't make much noise given that it wasn't flying that high.

tac foley

The F-117 was based in the UK for GW1, and used it as a staging post prior to deployment.

tac

OS119

Catweasel wrote: »

...This was probably mid nineties so unfortunately can't remember much more, though I seem to recall that it didn't make much noise given that it wasn't flying that high.

noise isn't an indicator - a Chinook flew about 1km away from me this week at about 500ft and i didn't hear a whisper. normally i'd expect it to rattle my teeth.

nothing immediately leaps to mind regarding your mystery plane - i'd say that a B-2 is a more distinctive shape than an F-117 and therefore much less easy to confuse with another aircraft than an F-117 - but the details don't fit: the B-2 didn't become operational till 97 even though it had been flying for 10 years, and it certainly wasn't flying over non-NATO countries in daylight at the time. it did display in the UK in 97/98, but it would almost certainly have flown a 'great circle' route and come down over Scotland, not Munster.

a B-1B with its wings swept has a similar, diamond-ish shape to an F-117 (albeit massively different in size), but nothing - to my mind - looks like the B-2's 'V' shape...

Catweasel

Someone else who appears to have seen an F117 over Irish airspace in 98 (3rd post on this page or CTRL F shannon)

http://forums.massiveattack.co.uk/viewtopic.php?p=21378&sid=0c243faa6f16e30795076c86392b966f

OS119

Catweasel wrote: »

Someone else who appears to have seen an F117 over Irish airspace in 98 (3rd post on this page or CTRL F shannon)

http://forums.massiveattack.co.uk/viewtopic.php?p=21378&sid=0c243faa6f16e30795076c86392b966f

just because someone says it, doesn't make it true.

you have to ask whether someone would really recognise an F-117 vs some other aircraft, and you have to ask whether the alleged sighting actually fits in with reality.

look at the guys post. he says it flew low. if it flew low, it was flying fast - unless it was landing - and he wouldn't have got that good a look at it, in which case it could be mistaken identity. you then ask 'wtf was an F-117 doing flying low over Ireland?' the answer is 'nothing' - i can think of only one reason why an F-117 would be in Irish airspace: an emergency diversion while transiting the Atlantic which would be recorded like any other emergency landing.

look at the threads in the Aviation forum surrounding the visit of Obama and the aircraft that accompanied him - hundreds of posts and photos for a couple of C-17's and Chinooks - yet bizarrely only one person appears to have noticed when the USAF's premier strike aircraft paid a visit...

deconduo

OS119 wrote: »

look at the threads in the Aviation forum surrounding the visit of Obama and the aircraft that accompanied him - hundreds of posts and photos for a couple of C-17's and Chinooks - yet bizarrely only one person appears to have noticed when the USAF's premier strike aircraft paid a visit...

But there's a huge difference between now and the mid-90s. If 200 people saw an interesting plane in the 90's maybe 4-5 would actually have a camera on hand. Of those, probably 2 would be willing to use up film to take a picture of it. Unless those 2 were enthusiasts of some sort, it would probably have ended there.

Nowadays if 200 people spotted a low flying fighter you can be sure that at least 100-150 of them would have their camera phones out taking photos and videos. Then all they have to do is to go on wikipedia later and spend a few minutes identifying it, and then post it on Facbook, Twitter, Boards etc.

OS119

deconduo wrote: »

But there's a huge difference between now and the mid-90s. If 200 people saw an interesting plane in the 90's maybe 4-5 would actually have a camera on hand. Of those, probably 2 would be willing to use up film to take a picture of it. Unless those 2 were enthusiasts of some sort, it would probably have ended there.

Nowadays if 200 people spotted a low flying fighter you can be sure that at least 100-150 of them would have their camera phones out taking photos and videos. Then all they have to do is to go on wikipedia later and spend a few minutes identifying it, and then post it on Facbook, Twitter, Boards etc.

i'm not talking about photographing it and putting it on a website, i'm merely talking about seeing it, remembering it, and years later mentioning it online - as happens with lots of other stuff.

does it not strike you as odd that only two people on the whole Island seem to have mentioned online that in the mid to late 1990's a USAF F-117 flew low over Ireland?

of course it could have happenned - there's no reason why in 20-odd years of operational service and trans-Atlantic flights no F-117 ever diverted to an Irish Airfield - whats bizaare is it apparently happened in daylight, only a couple of years before message boards became widespread, and yet there seems to be only a couple of mentions of it on the whole of the web.

TheLastLazyGun

It may have been Taranis on a test flight. Taranis is a new stealth aircraft developed for the British military capable of attacking targets as far away as Afghanistan.

tac foley

TheLastLazyGun wrote: »

It may have been Taranis on a test flight. Taranis is a new stealth aircraft developed for the British military capable of attacking targets as far away as Afghanistan.

The OP wrote that he saw it ~20 years ago..........

tac