Soviet developments could not be ignored by the book, despite the fact that at this time, nothing about Soviet stealth projects was known in the press. Another popular ’80s idea for stealth aircraft, possibly stemming from leaked information on Lockheed’s ‘Have Blue’. Ward’s MiG-2000 featured inward canting fins. I picked up another copy today, as I was curious to see how well this book had stood the test of 23 years. I believed that this book, with its thrilling cover, was my secret pass to the nefarious world of Stealth. So I was very happy when I was bought a copy of Stealth Warplanes, a book by Doug Richardson. With its secrecy, its potency and dramatic unveilings, it was wildly exciting. As an aeroplane-fixated ten-year-old, I was hungry for more information on this new world. Until then, aeroplanes had been tubes with wings, designed primarily with air particles in mind, now they were shaped for their reaction with radio waves things had suddenly changed. The B-2 ‘stealth bomber’ was a charcoal grey flying-wing, clearly designed by the same person who had created the Batmobile. Slightly preceding this, (in April 1988) the Northrop B-2 had also emerged from the Black world of secret defence projects. The photograph was of the Lockheed F-117, the legendary ‘stealth fighter’.
Until that moment the subject of the photo had been one of the world’s most closely-held secrets.
On November 10 1988, a heavily airbrushed photo was shown at a press briefing by Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, J.
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