|
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 picture below)
Bill Bennett
Director of Photography
Los Angeles
Photo: The used Mockup
on display at Ellsworth AFB South Dakota (Rob Vogelaar)
Photo: The used Mockup
on display at Ellsworth AFB South Dakota (Rob Vogelaar) |
