Stealth aircraft damaged over Kiev 1980 ?

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DNKY62

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Just trawling on the Interweb as you do when isolating and I came upon this article:


I've been looking but have found no further evidence

It sounds like to me that the military were playing a game of bluff and claiming that Stealth overflights were being undertaken regularly over Kiev and the Dnepropetrovsk area of Ukraine

Has anyone got anything to add here ?
 
I'd suspect disinformation, possibly even bait in a leak investigation of the period.
 
DNKY62 said:
Just trawling on the Interweb as you do when isolating and I came upon this article:


I've been looking but have found no further evidence

It sounds like to me that the military were playing a game of bluff and claiming that Stealth overflights were being undertaken regularly over Kiev and the Dnepropetrovsk area of Ukraine

Has anyone got anything to add here ?
Click to expand...

It’s not a real memo - the correct context is given in the source page:

Document 54: "Stealth," August 29, 1980. Top Secret.

Source: Record Group 59, PPS Records of Anthony Lake, 1977-1981, August 1980, National Archives and Records Administration.

This memo, found in the Anthony Lake's State Department file for the 1977-1981 years, is an attempt at stealth humor.
Click to expand...

Source:

The Area 51 File: Secret Aircraft and Soviet MiGs | National Security Archive

Washington, D.C., October 29, 2013 – The CIA's history of the U-2 spy plane, declassified this past summer, sparked enormous public attention to the U-2's secret test site at Area 51 in Nevada, but documents posted today by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org) show that Area 51...
nsarchive.gwu.edu nsarchive.gwu.edu
 
Disinformation requires an element of truth and various types of "stealthy" aircraft were being used at that time.

I very much doubt that the US would risk losing a Top Secret aircraft and there was speculation that some 50 of the elusive F19's were based @ Tonopah and some flew from the UK

www.nytimes.com

TOP-SECRET PLANE IS SAID TO CRASH (Published 1986)

www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
 
US stealth aircraft crash-landed on a Soviet runway, and the US don't want to tell the Soviets which runway it was. In one of the most populated parts of the USSR. I'm suuuuuure this is true.
 
Its a joke. It's clearly a joke written down in a memo, the joke being that stealth aircraft are so hard to detect the Soviets won't even be able to find it if it lands on one of their airfields. This kind of thing turns up from time to time in archives, its the equivalent of a funny email to your co-workers today.

Noone can seriously have thought for a moment this was real, surely? Simply reading it should suffice to dispel that idea.
 
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