Jim Goodall



In the spring of 1968, via the US Postal Service, I formally asked Lockheed, the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, and the Central Intelligence Agency for unclassified photos of the SR-71 on the ground or in the air. I was willing to pay the published rate for color 8x10s. I was turned down and never received any of the photos I had requested. The year 1975 was a watershed year; my dear friend, John Andrews, introduced me to an aviation character named John Lear, the son of the “Father of the Lear Jet,” William Lear. It was Through Lear that we discovered a path to the top of White Sides Mountain, 2,000 feet above our camp site location. On top of the mountain was an unobstructed panoramic view of the once very secret, Area 51. November 1988: After seeing and photographing the Lockheed Skunk Works F-117 for the first time along the fenceline at Tonopah Test Range (TTR), John Lear and I headed back to Las Vegas. We arrived at John’s home about 9:15 PM, and ten minutes later a young man showed up. I had print film that needed to be processed and all of the FotoMats (way before digital photography) were closed. I wouldn’t know if any of my images were any good until well into the next day. John’s friend told me he had a Kodak C-41 film processor at his home. That friend was a guy named Bob Lazar. We needed to head back to John’s friend’s home to process some film. There in living color was the very first non-DoD, or Lockheed photo, of the first operational stealth fighter, the F-117A Senior Trend. Had the Air Force, Lockheed, DoD and the CIA honored my photo requests in 1968, I would have been happy to just move along. But, as with all things government, their unofficial “official” policy was to not cooperate; so, I started digging, the more I dug, the more I found out and the deeper I dug. I would not be where I am today, in the field of spooky programs, if our government had given me what I wanted in 1968. I would have remained happy and my name would never have been associated with Area 51, the Blackbirds, the F-117 or the Skunk Works. And, Ben R. Rich and I would never have been friends. That’s how a young kid from Los Altos ended up 60+ years later being an expert on much of what has come out of the brilliant minds of the men and women at the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. Cheers...Jim Goodall