Originally Posted by
BEagle
The A-7 cover story did make it rather obvious that there was more to the ???th TFW, Tonopah AFB than Uncle Spam would admit!
When I joked about 'The odd looking black jets at Tonopah' to our USAF Exchange Officer, his reply of "There's just a bunch of A-7s there" was such an obviously weak cover that it was laughable.
A tragic accident on a cross country flight in 1987 drew unwanted attention to the A-7's and Bandit 222:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_I...rsair_II_crash
And there was more to cover up than just the F-117's. There was a small cadre of C-5 crewmembers read into the program that transported the F-117's with wings removed. I believe they publically did missions like taking F-5's to RAF Alconbury to hide their primary covert mission. The C-5 operation was known by some unofficial name like 'Major Mannion's Black Hole' since everyone who went into the program disappeared from the rest of the Military Airlift Command except for training.