Zoltan Dani also claims that his unit downed the commander's F-16 plane from the Aviano-based
555th Fighter Squadron "Triple Nickel". On May 1/2, 1999 the F-16 (s/n 88-0550) had already completed its combat sortie and was flying outbound from Serbian airspace, when its on-board radar warning receiver indicated illumination from Dani's SA-3 fire control radar. The pilot, Lt. Col. David Goldfein, decided to turn back and attack, but this proved a mistake, as two missiles were already underway and one hit his plane. Dani was not actually in the combat shift (for a unit to provide 24h/day readiness the crew is divided in 3 shifts) when the shootdown occurred. The shift was commanded by Maj. Boko Dotlić.
The radio signal logs of unit 250/3 contain two further proximity fuse activation pings beyond the F-117 and F-16 shootdown events, indicating that either extra NATO aircraft were hit or
ALE-50 towed jammer devices were destroyed by the missiles, as opposed to the SAM missiles simply missing due to radar jamming or
chaff dispersal.
Although Ret. Col. Zoltán Dani does not comment on the allegation (although Dani's wartime second in command Lt Col Đorđe Aničić does), as of mid-2009 some Hungarian aviation journalists claim one of these two events was a real hit on a
B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, which was either totalled or extensively re-built after an overseas crash landing (this plane was previously believed to be another combat-damaged F-117).
Ten years after the events, the
Hungarian military aviation magazine Aranysas, volume 11/2009, carried an extensive article on Zoltán Dani's story, on the occasion of his visit at the Hungarian Air Defence Collection, an NGO-operated SAM museum at
Zsámbék. Certain aspects of the F-117 shootdown story and general Serbian AAA activity during the Kosovo War were publicly disclosed for the first time in the article.
A documentary movie "The 21st Second" was made about Zoltán Dani. Dani also participated in the documentary movie "The Second Meeting", where he met Dale Zelko, the F-117 pilot he had shot down.
The S-125 was first deployed between 1961 and 1964 around
Moscow, augmenting the
S-25 and
S-75 sites already ringing the city, as well as in other parts of the
USSR. In 1964, an upgraded version of the system, the S-125M "Neva-M" and later S-125M1 "Neva-M1" was developed. The original version was designated SA-3A by the
US DoD and the new Neva-M named SA-3B and (naval) SA-N-1B. The Neva-M introduced a redesigned booster and an improved guidance system. The SA-3 was not used against U.S. forces in
Vietnam, because the Soviets feared that China (after the souring of Sino-Soviet relations in 1960), through which most, if not all of the equipment meant for North Vietnam had to travel, would try to copy the missile.
A Yugoslav Army
250th Air Defense Missile Brigade 3rd battery equipped with S-125 system managed
to shoot down an
F-117 Nighthawk stealth bomber on March 27, 1999 during the
Kosovo War (the only recorded downing of a stealth aircraft) near village Budjanovci, about 130 milles away from Kosovo. It was also used to shoot down a NATO
F-16 fighter on May 2 (its pilot; Lt. Col David Goldfein, the commander of
555th Fighter Squadron, managed to eject and was later rescued by a
combat search-and-rescue (CSAR) mission.
During the war, different Yugoslav SAM sites and possibly the SA-3 also shot down some NATO
UAVs.
"The war (in Kosovo) proved that a competent opponent can improvise ways to overcome superior weaponry because every technology has weaknesses that can be identified and exploited," the jury is still out even on real damage to Serbian military infrastructure, the fact remains that SAM sites forced NATO planes to fly higher and be less effective than they would have been with out these defences.