The daily work of the colonel (r) and mine as correspondent for Prensa Latina in Serbia delayed our new meeting, which eventually led to an interview published some time ago.
However, it is appropriate to repeat it on the occasion of the 24th anniversary of that fact which raised the morale of both the armed forces and the peoples of the former Yugoslavia and from which emerged an ingenious slogan that served as the title of the interview I gave on the eve of this event reproduce:
“Sorry, we didn’t know you were invisible”
There is no difference between a common man and a hero, simply because the hero is no more – and no less – than a common man growing and growing under complex and extraordinary circumstances.
The restless Colonel (r) Zoltan Dani is a case in point. Behind the glasses, her clear eyes shine with the intensity that emanates from alert, restless people, eager to know, learn, and do.
This has been a constant in his life since his birth on July 23, 1956 in Skorenovac, a village in southern Banat, just 50 kilometers from Belgrade, Serbia, inhabited mainly by Hungarian nationals of the Székely ethnic group, descendants believed – from the first settlements of the Huns from Central Asia.
It will be difficult for those who observe him or see him working in the bakery he himself created to imagine that this man of medium height – together with a small group of his companions – accomplished an unprecedented feat in the history of military conflicts against the greatest power in the world planets, no less.
His time to transcend came on the night of March 27, 1999, three days after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) began bombing what was left of Yugoslavia, when, due to his knowledge of electrical engineering and rock-solid determination, he destroyed an F-117A Stealth, the unbeatable jewel of the United States Air Force, in the air.
As the only child in a mixed marriage – the father is Hungarian and the Romanian mother, both seamstresses – the person I am talking to sees his childhood, adolescence and youth as beautiful periods of life in the time of the state that was newly created after the defeat of the German fascist occupiers in 1945.
The children – he recounts with enthusiasm and a certain nostalgia – had free access to education up to the highest levels, there was public health for all citizens who received housing from the centers where they work, an eight-hour day and now unthinkable Rights , like free vacation in a sanatorium by the sea.
How did you get into the military? I ask him.
“I chose this profession because when I was a child the maneuver troops roamed the city and I was fascinated by the attitude of these soldiers, which we children imitated by marching at their side with a piece of wood for a gun.
“In 1975 I entered the Aviation Military-Technical Academy in Rajlovac, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, specializing in anti-aircraft missile systems (DAA), then equipped with Soviet Volkov equipment, and graduated in 1978.
“Three times I trained in the Soviet Union and also took part in firing exercises there, where my country’s crew was the best among several participants.”
– Before the economic siege and military aggression of NATO, did you and your subordinates have any perception that an attack of such magnitude was imminent?
“Since 1981, after the death of President (Josip Broz) Tito, the drafting of the plan to destroy Yugoslavia began, but the Western powers, knowing that they could do nothing from the outside against the country’s military might, banked on implosion.
“We knew that millions of dollars were invested in it, arriving via various trade routes in five-kilogram packages, to break wills, buy people, create a wide network of so-called non-governmental organizations and also political parties, for more than thousand appeared 500.
“The socialist welfare system that we had was a bad example for this world of capital and they used the old Roman strategy of divide and rule, which started the political fragmentation and the economic crisis.
HARD AND TENSIVE YEARS LATER
Dani tells about his journey through Croatia, where he served as head of a unit in his specialty until the early 1990s, when the internal conflict in the country started.
– They deprived us of electricity, water and supplies, while their secessionist military offered us everything to turn us into a desert, but I reached a kind of truce with them until 1992, when the transfer order to the Banjaluka area arrived, he recalls itself.
Immediately details flow from the memories of returning home, the new studies in 1994, then the Neva missile system, also Soviet, much more modern, and the General Staff Improvement Course in 1997
Later, the month-long full-throttle training in a simulator, the constant drills to ensure his men reduced the two-and-a-half hours it took to get the batteries operational to an hour and a half.
In full fashion, at exactly 3:00 p.m. local time on March 24, 1999—the first day of NATO bombing—the then-Colonel and head of the Third Division of the DAA’s 250th Missile Brigade received the command to go into combat status .
There was a relocation, installation of a model of the battery with all the details, masking and absolute silence regime until the 27th at 20:00 when the order to connect the system arrives, at 20:15 everything was ready to start and at 20: At 12:42 a.m., one of the missiles hit the previously invisible middle of the flight.
– What did this moment mean for you and your subordinates? I interrupt him.
“It was a huge joy, we saw on the radar how it was losing altitude until it crashed near the neighboring village of Bujanovci, but the surprise came later when a senior command officer came to congratulate us for not being less than one F-117A shot down. , the invisible man, the nighthawk and then I yelled: Bingo!
“The news spread like wildfire and the Yugoslav Army continued to raise the existing high morale in the knowledge that we could face this powerful opponent and deliver blows, that we had what it took because our technology was practically intact. .
“It was also a spur to the population, who took to the streets to celebrate it, and a sarcastic phrase, reproduced on improvised posters and addressed to the aggressors, went around the world: Sorry, we didn’t know that it is invisible.
“We did not know that we had achieved an apparatus that was considered unbeatable, so much so that the Americans did not believe it, they speculated that we had a very new and unknown technique until it was known that it was related to radar and missiles from was the 60s-80s but managed by staff who knew them perfectly and above all very coherent”.
And how was the feat possible? I ask.
“The system consists of two radars, surveillance and target. We initially perceive the plane, but very imprecisely given the technology that was developed to build it.
“Then I did something illegal. As the plane entered the knockdown zone, I turned on the second at a shorter frequency for better definition. According to the regulations, this should not be done, since the radiation emanating from it will be detected by the aircraft’s radar, which will automatically launch missiles to destroy it.
“Theoretically, this happens in 20 seconds. But when I got it right, I ordered it to fire and shut it down, the operations officer pushed the button and the missile hit it. It’s only been 18 seconds…!”
THE DAYS AFTER
The team received acclaim for their accomplishment and during the course of the attack, which lasted until June 10, they also shot down an F-16 and are known to have hit a B-2 Spirit strategic bomber, although they could not Access to the plane, location where it crashed, location in Croatia near the border but the evidence is available.
The Kumanovo Accords, signed on June 9, stipulated the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army and police from Kosovo province, the deployment of a multinational NATO force, and UN Security Council Resolution 1244 the next day.
The cessation of hostilities led to the rapid Western military presence in this province and the process that initially led to the expulsion of the Serbs and unilateral independence of 2008, a status quo that is maintained and the dispute continues as an open wound.
Our hero, Colonel Zoltan Dani, followed his military life until 2004.
His extensive knowledge of electrical engineering, which enabled him to make the slightest correction to the radar to achieve the downing of the F-117A, did not result in an award, but the disregard committed in modifying the radar did not result in a sanction either , although he was relegated to logistics, where he exercised no command.
In December 1993 his father died, who had gone to live with relatives in Malmö, Sweden, separated from his wife. In early January 1994 they gave him a month’s leave to go to the funerals and he went.
The situation in Serbia was so depressing that his monthly salary was about three to four Deutschmarks (about one dollar) and he had to pawn his plane ticket.
There he worked in one of his relatives’ bakeries, he enjoyed his work, and in a month he earned enough money to return, pay off debts and open his own bakery in his home village, to feed his wife and three children, two men and one woman.
His finances didn’t allow him to buy a mixer that cost thousands of dollars, but his creative spirit took over, he bought an old cement mixer and with it parts from a Zastava 101 car and other junk, he built one that was still around works at The Perfection.
Here he lives happily with what he does, he is a co-owner of a small computer company, he continues to bake bread and sweets and he has a personal museum with a large piece of the “Invisible Man” and the downed F-16, several of its parts and components , diplomas and recognitions from various domestic and foreign institutions.
FINAL
When his real name became known – he was using a military pseudonym – this epic attracted interest and two documentaries were made.
It shows the man, his actions and vicissitudes in their full scope, meeting 12 years later with the pilot of the plane he shot down, Lieutenant Colonel (r) Dale Zelko, first via video conference, then in person as they exchanged visits.
– How did you come to this knowledge, I ask him.
“I hesitated to do that, I didn’t want anything I came with to destroy and kill innocent women, children and the elderly, but my son and the filmmaker Zeljko Mirkovic convinced me that I could be useful to the country , which the Western media dubbed the land of the savages, debunking the lies so often repeated. And so it happened.”
Just before we said goodbye, he told me that as soon as Zelko arrived in Belgrade for the first meeting – Dani and his family later visited him in the United States – Zelko had admitted to being misled about the bombing targets and expressed regret before the smiling colonel, who shot him.
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*Editor, former correspondent of Prensa Latina in Yugoslavia (1974-1977) and in Serbia (2016-2021)