Re: Question about F117 photo before public revelation


Message posted by Tony on November 09, 2010 at 19:37:43 PST:

Steve is correct in that Joel Putnam shot the first published photo of an F-117. He shot that from his back yard in Mojave and sent it in to AvWeek. They enlarged and sharpened it as much as technology would allow. It may not have been pretty, but it did show the shape of the airplane.
My pics came almost a year after the Air Force released that one poor-quality image. Jim Goodall and I made a couple trips to Tonopah just to shoot the F-117’s. Some people think it was all clandestine, but that’s not even close. We drove right to the Tonopah gate, got out of the car, and went into the guard shack. We explained to them who we were and that we would be on public land outside the fence taking photos. The guards took copies of our licenses and basically said as long as we stayed on public land, we were fine. If we crossed the fence, they WOULD shoot us. When we left at night we checked out with them and then checked back in the next morning. By the time of our final visit, they even gave us their addresses and asked for copies of any good photos we got. While there, we could see that the F-117’s were tracking us with their FLIR and DLIR systems so we made up our own sign to say Hi.
Since the USAF still refused to release and good clear shots, the one’s I shot out there became quite popular. A short time later, I had the opportunity to meet Ben Rich and I thought he might be upset that we released all these pics, but he was actually quite happy. He had been trying to get the USAF to release better shots and they refused, so he used the fact that civilians were getting clear shots now so the USAF finally gave in and Lockheed was allowed to release all those great shots they had been sitting on for so long. There’s the inside story of the first F-117 photos, hope it helps clear a few things up.

Tony Landis


In Reply to: Re: Question about F117 photo before public revelation posted by Steve Douglass on November 01, 2010 at 18:15:24 PST:

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