These next two posts are going to be creepy. Fair warning.
Back in the mid to late 1980s, I ran a local BBS. As soon as the internet and first web browser that could display images came online, I moved to a newspaper style on the internet. At that time there was me and the New York Times and that was pretty much it.
In 1989 as I was launching the Ypsilanti Community Information System (YCIS) on the internet and doing my photojournalism shtick, I was doing the usual mid 20s guy cool stuff. I owned a retired high speed pursuit Ford LTD police car and a 1985 Ninja ZXR 1000, a retired track bike.
Over at Selfridge ANG, they held a yearly air show so I called the base commanders office and talked to him for a bit and he gave me a press pass for the show because I had the only newspaper on the internet. I get there 2 hours before the gates opened and came to find out I got my own Jeep with Sargent as an escort. I met up with a Canadian guy and we decided to share the jeep. He was a photojournalist who was also a patch collector. Guy had hundreds of the things.
So we head around the tarmac shooting shots and interviewing the various pilots and whatnot. Here’s some shots from that day.
And then the show starts and it’s time to start doing my favorite, in air photography. Being a press pass holder, I was in the VIP area with a couple that was in town as support staff for a certain aircraft you might know as the B2. While it was inbound, I was talking to him – at that time, there was no landing, no going below 1,000 feet and no opening the bays doors. On pass and that’s it. Period. The plane had not entered service, was still in testing. This was if I recall the first fly-by authorized.
Couldn’t get anything out of the Northrop guy other than no systems came from any other airframe in services. 100% 1 off systems. And no, I can’t tell you anything else, classified. Let me tell you something about that plane, especially this test bed version. You can’t wrap your brain around it. It’s pitch black (despite how it looks here) and you have no frame of reference. It could be 100 feet up and you couldn’t tell. And spooky quiet. Just a whisper as it went by.