I'm curious as to how such a huge oversight in the design of the craft made it to production, since it's widely known that 90 degree angles is a surefire way to get instantly detected on radar.
The USAF reused the route packages and the shooters knew the approximate location and timing of the flight. A Serbian asset tipped off the shooters that the normal SEAD assets would not be present. Without SEAD the shooters were able to keep transmitting long enough to see the plane. There were 3 F-117 in the flight, only one had its doors open long enough for the shooters to acquire.
Different routes, randomized timing, SEAD presence, better stealth hygiene and it would have been just another night.
The Serbian commander comes across as skilled, creative, and diligent. The USAF comes across as lazy and sloppy that night.
Do you work in military aircraft production? (just curious of your background)
The thing is if the aircraft gets to the point of releasing bombs or missiles it has pretty much done its job. You won't get that far without being stealthy.
Only in the worst kind of situation is it acceptable to lose an aircraft like this, especially when you have control of the airspace. In most cases, stealth aircraft should be detected so late that you can't mount an initial defense, or an effective counter attack while the aircraft is returning to base.
However, from what I've read, it sounds like radar reflectons from the doors themselves are dwarfed by radar signals bouncing off the upper bulkhead of the bomb bay. If they made the side bulkheads of the bomb bay at 90 degrees to the upper bulkhead, then an incoming radio wave bouncing off both the upper and side bulkheads will leave anti-parallel to its incoming direction... right back at the sending radar. (This geometric identity is used on the laser reflectors left on the moon. They send the laser right back at the sender without having to track the Earth.)
Though, maybe the reporting I've read is just imprecise, and maybe the doors do have a larger radar cross-section than the bomb bays themselves.
...but I'm also not an aircraft designer.