Photographer’s ‘Special’ Photo of B-2 Plane That Bombed Iran Goes Viral

A photographer went extremely viral on social media after capturing a showstopping photo of the secretive B-2 Spirit Bomber flying over the Washington Monument.

Dustin Smith has received over two million views on X (formerly Twitter) of his photo showing the B-2 bomber, which was used during last month’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, flanked by two Lockheed F-35 fighter jets over the D.C. landmark.

Smith tells PetaPixel that he traveled to the capital city from Orlando, Florida, to “celebrate the 249th birthday of the United States,” and although he was expecting a flyover, the government doesn’t publish the flight path in advance.

“Most of the time, these aircraft are utilized in classified missions,” says Smith. “But based on flyovers that have happened in the past, I thought the planes were going to come from the Lincoln Memorial.”

Smith says he envisioned a shot of the planes coming toward the Washington Monument, and it would, “almost be like the planes were climbing a mountain toward the peak of the Monument.” But the best-laid plans of photographers often go awry, and the aircraft appeared from the north, traveling south.

“I’m like, ‘man, I am probably not getting this photo’,” Smith says. But as the planes approached, Smith held his Canon R5 with his RF 24-105mm f/4 attached — set at 56mm, f/8, and 1/3200 of a second — steady and “just held down the shutter” as the USAF flew overhead. “Yeah, it was a special shot,” he adds.

Twitter Reaction

Smith explains that he likes to quickly put something out on his X account before going back and carefully editing his photos, which is what he did for the B-2 photo. Smith initially got a retweet from well-known rocket photographer John Kraus. But, initially at least, things started slowly, and Smith went to bed on July 4 with his photo gaining a few hundred likes.

But on the morning of July 5, he woke to find his phone “blowing up.” It began when a large X account called War Monitor cropped out Smith’s watermark and reposted it without credit. But people began tagging Smith, and eventually, a Community Note was added. But that was just the start.

The White House deputy chief of staff, Dan Scavino, posted Smith’s photo; he also cropped it so that Smith’s watermark was gone and bizarrely made edits to the photo — desaturating the image and adding a vignette.

Smith responded to Scavino’s post with: “Hi, I’m the photographer,” which subsequently received 2.1 million views and over 50,000 likes.

“As soon as I posted that, it exploded,” says Smith. “I don’t want to get political, but I think because the guy was associated with the current administration, it kind of fueled the fire for people to bash.”

More of Smith’s work can be found on his X account, Instagram, and Patreon.

Update 7/9: A previous version of this article stated that the B-2 was flanked by an F-35 and an F-22 when it is actually two F-35s. We regret the error.

Image credits: Photographs by Dustin Smith