July 4th, 2000 - The first and only time a B-2 stealth bomber did a flyby of the Twin Towers.
On July 4, 2000, a Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit stealth bomber flew past the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center over Lower Manhattan.
A New Orleans photographer, Sean Gautreaux, was on the Hudson River shoreline with a 35mm camera. The bomber gave almost no warning, and he barely had time to lift the lens. The photo he got has become one of the most talked-about flyover images in aviation history.
It shows the flying-wing silhouette of the B-2 near the antenna of the North Tower. The flyover was part of OpSail 2000, a maritime celebration that brought tall ships and military flyovers to New York Harbor for the millennium Fourth of July.
It was the first time a B-2 had ever flown over the World Trade Center. It was also the last. Fourteen months later, on September 11, 2001, the towers were gone.
The B-2 is one of the most secretive aircraft ever built, designed to slip past enemy air defenses undetected, at a cost often put at roughly $2 billion apiece. Gautreaux says only two other photos of the moment are known to exist. Most people on the ground never realized the bomber was overhead until it had passed.