Bevo here is a former skipper of the Red Hats, he's kindly nudged some of my speculation about earlier black work mishaps in the right direction.
Originally Posted by
West Coast
How long did it take before the truth was known on the type of aircraft Gen Bond was flying?
Watch this space is a decade or so for an update.
Originally Posted by
Ewan Whosearmy
The Air Force authorised a 'leak' that it was a MiG-23 within weeks of Bond's death.
And, over three decades later it is thought that the leak about General Bond's MiG-23 crash was put out when rumors of his earlier ride in a still unacknowledged F-117 started to emerge.
Here's a contemporary 1984 news report on speculation surrounding General Bond's mishap:
The Pentagon has declined to comment officially on the accident, other than to say that the victim, Lieut. Gen. Robert M. Bond, vice commander of the Air Force Systems Command, was killed while flying ''an Air Force specially modified test craft.''
The accident occurred on the Nellis Air Force Range, part of a wasteland that also encompasses the Government's underground nuclear testing field. It is the headquarters for a number of secret programs. One is the Stealth project, which seeks to develop materials and shapes that will make weapons less detectable by hostile radar.
Weapons Acquired and Tested
Pentagon sources initially denied news reports that General Bond, who was 54 years old, was flying a plane involved in the Stealth project. The Air Force is known to be developing designs for a radar-evading strategic bomber and a jet fighter, but no complete models are thought to exist yet.
Nellis is also the home of a longstanding program to evaluate Soviet weapons acquired covertly or on the world arms market. Knowledgeable sources in Congress, the Defense Department and the military industry said all the military services maintained projects to test such weaponry. After the 1967 war between Israel and Egypt, there was a huge influx of Soviet arms for testing purposes.
GENERAL KILLED IN NEVADA CRASH FLEW SOVIET JET - NYTimes.com
The Have Blue stealth prototypes had been flying since 1977 when this article was written.