Photo: USAF/Staff Sgt. Rachel Maxwell
For as long as aviation has been part of our lives, people have also had a long list of expectations when it comes to what constitutes an airplane: it has to have a more or less cylinder-shaped body, two large wings, one to each side, and two smaller ones on the tail, and of course, engine in various, yet visible positions on the fuselage.
That was the case for a great deal of decades during aviation’s youth, but once humans got the hang of it, all sorts of weirdly shaped and strangely engineered contraptions that could fly started popping up. Given how most of them were results of military projects, they were also secret, and that led to wild speculation of what these flying things could be, or where they could be coming from.
Just take a look at the B-2 Spirit and suppose for a second you don’t know what it is. Doesn’t your mind, trying to explain the unexplainable, begin to come up with the craziest of ideas, ranging from Russians to aliens from another galaxy?
Designed as a heavy strategic bomber, the B-2 is also supposed to be undetectable by the enemy, hence the flying wing shape it embraces, a shape that is nothing like what people can usually associate with human-made airplanes.
Of course, we are all used to the B-2 by now, and that’s why the rare sight of it no longer scares us. But just to remind you how strange this thing looks next to the airplanes we know and love, here’s a fresh USAF photo for you.
The spec of darkness that is the B-2 is seen here leading a formation of three other airplanes during a Bomber Task Force mission over the North Sea back in August. The “normal” planes seen here are one F-15C Eagle and two F-15E Strike Eagles deployed with the Liberty Wing deployed in Europe, and they look as if they’re escorting an alien spaceship out of some critical airspace.
Just take a look at the B-2 Spirit and suppose for a second you don’t know what it is. Doesn’t your mind, trying to explain the unexplainable, begin to come up with the craziest of ideas, ranging from Russians to aliens from another galaxy?
Designed as a heavy strategic bomber, the B-2 is also supposed to be undetectable by the enemy, hence the flying wing shape it embraces, a shape that is nothing like what people can usually associate with human-made airplanes.
Of course, we are all used to the B-2 by now, and that’s why the rare sight of it no longer scares us. But just to remind you how strange this thing looks next to the airplanes we know and love, here’s a fresh USAF photo for you.
The spec of darkness that is the B-2 is seen here leading a formation of three other airplanes during a Bomber Task Force mission over the North Sea back in August. The “normal” planes seen here are one F-15C Eagle and two F-15E Strike Eagles deployed with the Liberty Wing deployed in Europe, and they look as if they’re escorting an alien spaceship out of some critical airspace.
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