Ernie P.

My Feedback: (3)

JohnnyS, you nailed it! And, you're up! See guys? Now that wasn't so hard, was it? Thanks; Ernie P.


This man was not a pilot or part of an aircrew; but he is most assuredly part of aviation history.

Question: What warbird history maker do I describe?

Clues:

(1) He, and the group he led, accomplished something never done before.

(2) And, not done since.

(3) Something many thought couldn’t be done.

(4) And he may well have done it twice.

(5) He was a Colonel.

(6) He commanded a military unit.

(7) He taught his unit to accomplish its mission, and yet to survive under circumstances which were not normally conducive to survival.

(8) His unit was far more mobile than most similar units.

(9) In addition to teaching his unit to move and survive, he adopted new tactics which increased its effectiveness.

(10) After achieving his historic “first”, he remained an unknown; until some years later.

(11) Only after he retired, did his name become known.

(12) He had initially used an alias to escape publicity; or perhaps public knowledge might be a better term.

(13) Interestingly, after his retirement from military service, he worked as a baker in his home town.

(14) Units like his were not initially intended to be mobile; although he was not the first to use them in this manner.

(15) He trained his unit to be ready to move in little more than half the time normally required.

(16) He also trained them to better stay hidden, while preparing to move.

(17) Units similar to his, but which were less mobile and which stayed active in the same area for a longer time prior to movement, simply didn’t survive.

(18) Before the outbreak of hostilities, he had already trained his unit in the new tactics. When hostilities erupted, his unit was ready.

(19) The stress of operations made it necessary to replace some personnel; who simply could not operate under the conditions imposed upon them by enemy action. He replaced personnel who were unable to cope, both during pre-conflict training and during combat operations.

(20) He made liberal use of simulated engagements in training his crews.

(21) He made liberal use of backups; usually delivering twice the firepower normally used.

(22) Decoys were also used liberally, to protect his unit.

(23) Some of these decoys were just mockup dummies. Some were much more elaborate in nature.

(24) He made use of older equipment, in the hope enemy units would not be set up to deal with it.

(25) He also devised new and innovative tactics, to better utilize the older equipment.

(26) He used equipment salvaged from confiscated aircraft to erect active decoys.

(27) A combination of bad weather, and information from friendly spies, caused him to break even his own normally strict rules; leading to his greatest success.

(28) His equipment was using the lowest frequency possible. He was hoping to pick up backscatter from the interior of the enemy units.

(29) A documentary movie was made about his life.

(30) He also appeared in another documentary movie about one of his victims.

(31) His exploits were kept quiet for more than ten years, before details began to leak out.

(32) Much of his tactical doctrine was based upon experiences in the conflict in Lebanon in 1982.

(33) His breaking of his own rules (in (27) above) was based upon knowledge that the inherent danger to his own unit was lessened on a particular night.

(34) His first victory was historic. The second was denied; although the pilot seemed to agree. The third is still problematic, although many seem to believe it.

(35) The equipment he utilized was first used in the early 1960’s.

(36) His victories are often used as an example of how superior technology can be defeated by improvization and imagination.

(37) His victories are also used as proof that any technology, no matter how superior, has weaknesses which can be discovered and exploited.

Answer: Colonel Zoltan Dani



Zoltán Dani (Serbian Cyrillic: Золтан Дани) (23 July 1956 in Kovin) is a former colonel of the Yugoslav Army and former commander of the 3rd battery of the 250th Missile Brigade, which shot down an F-117 Nighthawk near the village of Buđanovci on 27 March 1999, during the Kosovo War. The hit was achieved with a SA-3 Goa SAM system. He was initially unknown to the public and aliased with the name Gvozden Đukić. However, upon retiring from the military, he revealed his identity.

Dani claimed that his battery also shot down an F-16 which according to NATO was lost due to "mechanical failure"; according to the crashed F-16's pilot, his aircraft was a victim of a SAM weapon.

Since retiring from military service, Dani has been working as a baker in his native village Skorenovac. He is an ethnic Hungarian (part of the Székelys of Bukovina).

Based on experiences of the 1982 Lebanon War, constant relocation of all assets was key to survival of Dani's unit, the 3rd missile detachment of the 250th Serbian Air Defence Battalion. Although the SA-3 / "S-125M Neva" system is not a mobile SAM complex per design, its solid fueled missiles are transportable in near combat ready condition (in fact the Polish Armed Forces and Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces each created mobile versions of the SA-3 on T-72 tank and T-55 tank chassis respectively in the 1990s).

Therefore, Lt. Col. Dani trained his SA-3 unit to achieve a 90 minute equipment break-down time with minimal lighting provided for better camouflage, one hour better than the standard time. Further set-up and break-down time reductions were achieved by reducing the SA-3 unit's number of active 5P73 launchers and V-601P missiles to just 2x2 from the original 4x4 configuration.

This reduction in missile capability was justified, because of the expected strictly limited time slots and occasions where a Serbian SAM battery could open fire in face of a tremendous NATO Wild Weasel capability, with any hope of self-preservation. The lean use of SAM missiles also became a necessity later on, as the initial March 24, 1999, 20:20 NATO air strike destroyed a hundred reloads of ready to use V-601P missiles stored in two concrete vaults at the Jakovo SAM base.

Lt. Col. Dani made it a strict field rule that the SA-3's UNV type fire control radar could only be turned on for a maximum of 2 x 20 seconds in combat, after which the battery's equipment must be immediately broken down and trucked to a prepared alternative launch site, whether or not any missile has been fired. This rule proved essential, because other Serbian AAA units, emitting high-frequency radiation for any longer periods or forgetting to relocate, were hit by AGM-88 HARM missile counter-strikes from NATO aircraft, suffering radar equipment and personnel losses.

In order to train personnel to operate efficiently under such pressures, Zoltán Dani obtained access to an "Accord" electronic signal simulator, which allowed the SA-3 radar and guidance crew practice combat scenarios based on imitated engagements. Several soldiers were removed from position both during the pre-war practice drills and wartime guard shifts, when they proved unable to cope with the psychological stress of being targeted by enemy aircraft.

It was decided two missiles would be launched against any target near simultaneously, in order to maximize hit probability. Unusually, launches were to be conducted against NATO aircraft that had already accomplished their ground strike missions and were about to leave Serbian airspace. Their northern heading was pointing away from the direction of powerful NATO airborne jammer sources, thereby allowing the SA-3's un-modernized UNV fire control radar set to operate with less interference.

Dani's mobility rule was strictly observed in his unit, with the trucks relocating frequently during the 78 days of Kosovo War, as they constantly shuttled missiles, radars and equipment among the dozen alternative launch sites, most of them embankments left over from already phased out SA-2 (S-75) units.

Radar sets obtained from confiscated Iraqi MiG-21 planes were planted around the SAM sites to serve as active emitter decoys, which diverted some anti-radiation missiles from the actual targets (dozens of Iraqi MiG-21/23 warplanes, sent to Yugoslavia for industrial overhaul, were seized in 1991, after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.) Retired SAM radar sets were used as optical decoys, left at well-known military bases to lure NATO planes to waste munition on worthless targets. Owing to these measures, Dani's unit evaded 23 incoming HARM missiles, all of which impacted off-site with insignificant or zero damages.

General surveillance of NATO aircraft was provided by vintage P-18 radar sets, which used vacuum tubes and a large rotating Yagi antenna grid for meter-band illumination. Under optimal conditions the Soviet-made P-18 was able to plot large-Radar cross-section aircraft from 125 to 200 km, depending on the target's size, but with a high range inaccuracy of several hundred meters.

Zoltán Dani tuned his P-18 to the lowest possible frequency, hoping that meter band waves would reflect from the inside of targets, rendering stealth aircraft skin technology ineffective. In practice his modified P-18 provided stable plot of F-117 movements from just 25 km, which was useful when combined with the comparatively short missile range of the SA-3 air defence complex. Furthermore, the P-18 meter band radar could be kept almost constantly emitting, since most NATO radar warning receiver devices did not cover such a very low frequency band.

Zoltán Dani initially claimed that four major capacitors had been replaced in the P-18, to further increase the wavelength. However, he later admitted that no such modifications had been made, and that his story was a "marketing trick."


On the particular night of the F-117 shootdown, 27 March 1999, Zoltán Dani broke his own ruleset. He had information about unfavourable Adriatic weather conditions and Serbian spies residing near Italian NATO airbases informed the Serbian Air Defence HQ about lack of EA-6 Prowler electronic jammer and "Wild Weasel" anti-SAM aircraft launches during the late evening. Therefore any F-117s in the air on that fateful night were literally alone in the dark, but with high crew morale due to their invulnerability during previous day's sorties.

In the evening, Dani's P-18 long-distance radar set malfunctioned at 19:05, almost the same time when four F-117s prepared for take-off from Aviano Air Base to attack targets in Belgrade. The repaired P-18 radar returned to air by 19:50 and started to emit at the specially modified lower frequency. Lt. Col. Dale Zelko's plane (tail number 82-0806) and three other F-117 flying northbound were acquired at 20:40 local time and so the SA-3 battery's fire control radar went on air. The UNV radar emitted at high frequency for 2 x 20 seconds, but it was unable to obtain a lock on the targets.

Lt. Col. Dani then ordered a third illumination round, against his own rulebook, but knowing that NATO lacked immediate counterstrike capability on the particular occasion. Lock was obtained and at a distance of 13 km and an altitude of 8 km. Two SA-3 missiles were launched in short succession, with one obtaining a proximity fuse hit, as notified by an automatic radio pinger burst. The F-117 was structurally disabled by the sudden minus 6G negative load and stall-crashed in inverted position in an agricultural field, near the village of Buđanovci. The pilot ejected successfully and was rescued later on by NATO Combat search and rescue helicopters. The F-117's large kite-shaped titanium engine outlet heatshield is still kept by Dani in his garage.