In the films and photographs made that day, Út is visible wearing his distinctive helmet with a tab sticking out of it, a flak jacket with “AP” written on the back, short sleeves, his camera bag, poncho, and watch. Burnett has often noted how his friend Út took the photo while he, Burnett, missed it because he was rewinding his film. He’s said he recalls seeing Út run up the road with Newsweek stringer Alex Shimkin. Burnett has repeatedly said he did not see who took the photograph, but he is convinced Út did, saying that, to his recollection, Út was the only person in the right position to have gotten the shot. Butterfield, who also maintains Út took the photograph, told us in August 2024, “Kim Phúc emerged from the smoke crying and on fire. It was very powerful. Not sure who else was there. I wasn’t paying attention to [Út], I didn’t know him at that time. I was moving all the time, because the scene was moving, and we didn’t know what was going to happen next.”
When pressed, neither Burnett nor Butterfield is able to say they actually witnessed Út take the photograph, and no one else has come forward to say definitively that they saw him take the photo. Burnett has referred to a lone photographer we can see beyond the concertina wire earlier in the sequence as Út, which might make it possible for Út to have been in the right place at the right time. But that is not Út; we believe it’s a military photographer, later identified by the AP as Huỳnh Công Phúc. (Both AP and World Press, in their own investigations, concluded based on available footage that Huỳnh Công Phúc could plausibly have been in the right area to take the “Napalm Girl” photograph, though no one has to this point come forward claiming he did. Huỳnh Công Phúc died in 2009.) The military photographer is carrying a bag and wearing camouflage, not the U.S. military olive-green that Út was wearing; he wasn’t wearing a flak jacket, as Út was, and he bears no resemblance to the person Út identified as himself that day years later on his own Instagram feed. And besides, the picture of that lone photographer beyond the wire is credited to Út in the AP archive, in which case Út couldn’t be in the photograph. We know the TV crews and photographer who made the images of Kim Phúc all moved beyond the concertina wire. In one intriguing photo, we see a photographer in a white shirt and black vest photographing the children as they run past the TV crews, putting him in an ideal place to have taken the photograph moments before.
