The Serbian who downed a US stealth jet and befriended the pilot Twenty years ago, as a Yugoslav army commander, Zoltan Dani achieved a miraculous military feat: wielding outdated missile equipment, his army unit shot down an American F117 "stealth fighter", deemed almost invisible to radar, flying over Serbia as part of NATO's 1999 air strike assault. But in perhaps an even more remarkable twist, the retired army officer is now close friends with the American pilot whose Nighthawk he brought down.