F-117s Headed to the Graveyard

Five F-117A Nighthawk jets left Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., on Tuesday bound for their original home at Nevada’s Tonopah Test Range as part of an ongoing effort to retire the nation’s first stealth jets and close a prominent chapter of aviation history. Arlan Ponder, a spokesman for the 49th Fighter Wing at Holloman, in Alamogordo, N.M., said the five jets that left Tuesday were preceded by five last week. Five more will arrive Friday at the Tonopah airfield, 140 miles northwest of Las Vegas. “We’ve gradually been sending them out,” he said about the $45 million planes that, because of their still-classified nature, were spared going to the so-called “boneyard” at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base where rows and rows of outdated military aircraft bake in the Sonoran Desert sun near Tucson, Ariz.