How the making of a commercial for the
Honda CRX Si
Kept the United States Air Force busy
After we spotted the pictures above on the internet
we started to send some emails around to find out
the story behind the plane in the background of the
Honda.
Rob Vogelaar, (member of the zap16.com team)
remembered photographing the mockup as shown on the
photo, but did not exactly know what the story
behind the wooden stealth was. after some time he
got a reply email from Bill Bennet, director of
photography of the firm that shot the commercial for
the Honda CRX Si:
Rob.
This aircraft mockup was built to approximately 3/4
full scale. It was designed and built by John Ward,
a mechanical special effects technician, based at
that time in Agua
Dulce, CA,
just north of Los
Angeles.
The thing that made the
commercial unique was the fact
that he built the plane in California, transported it on
5 trucks to Florida
where the commercial was shot, and the commercial
was released all before the Air force and Northrop
revealed this very secret aircraft to the public.
At the time of design and construction, there
existed only a very vague "artists conception"
drawing of the B-2 that had appeared in the Los
Angeles Times newspaper. It showed the shape of the
cockpit, the shape of the engine intakes, and the
unique shape of the trailing edge of the wing.
John made a
guess at that point that Northrop,
having built the YB-49 many years earlier, would not
throw away all that design work, but would rather
simply build upon that design. And as it turns out,
that is exactly what they did: the sweep angle of
the wings is exactly the same between the B-2 and
the YB-49, the wing span is the same, etc. Thus,
the airplane we built and photographed was almost
exactly the same as the actual B-2, though ours was
3/4 scale.
Word has it that when the commercial was first run,
about 2 weeks before the official Air force rollout,
the phone literally exploded off the walls at both
the Pentagon and Northrop headquarters, with all
these top brass military and politicians demanding
how some Japanese car company got the design of the
plane before it was even released.
When we were shooting on this airfield out in the
middle of the Everglades,
60 miles
west
of
Miami, Florida,
the
Stealth mockup was spotted by the
US
surveillance satellites. We got a visit for a couple
of Air Force fighters one afternoon. They landed,
taxied over, opened the cockpit and yelled down,
"What the hell is that?" We responded that it was a
non-flying prop for a commercial, and they smiled,
waved laughing and departed.
After the commercial was released, the museum in SD
bought the mockup, disassembled it , and transported
it to their facility, where it is now on display.
(as seen on
pictures below)
Bill Bennett
Director of Photography
Los
Angeles
This model is no longer on
display at the
South
Dakota Air and Space Museum.
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