The drones were MQ-9 Reapers armed with laser-guided supersonic Hellfire missiles. They heard the mission controller order the drones to clear out to the south, and authorize them to return immediately after the strike to kill anyone who survived. It was nearly midnight Zulu Time-two in the morning local time. Still offshore, they went into a holding pattern that had been planned as a cushion to allow them to get the timing just right. Approximately 250 miles north of the Libyan coastline, the pilots turned south, switched off their transponders, and disappeared from air-traffic-control radar. Because of its composite structure, the B-2 is particularly vulnerable to static discharges and lightning strikes, and is required to stay 40 miles away from thunderstorms-twice as far as other airplanes.ĭuring the refueling and afterward, the B-2 pilots spoke with European air traffic control.
Once they passed into the Mediterranean, the pilots used their radar to find three tankers that had come from Germany to meet them for their second refueling, and to map some thunderstorms that were active in the area at the time. More intriguingly, given that the bomber scarcely has space in its cockpit to accommodate a pilot and co-pilot, Langewiesche, by the sound of things, was allowed to join a B2 flight crew on a mission that would take them all the way from the United States to a bombing run on an ISIS camp in Libya. Recently, journalist William Langewiesche was given the opportunity to become familiar with the bomber and those that pilot it.
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