The angles of optical axis in the stripmap synthetic aperture ladar(SAL) system include two aspects: the pitch angle and the horizontal angle. The horizontal angle leads to the fact that the antenna aperture moving axis is not parallel to the azimuth moving direction which causes the image distortion. Formulas are deduced theoretically on the relationship between two-axis angle and distortion, and experiments are carried out to prove this situation. The results show that the image distortion is severe in the actual stripmap SAL system. The way on image correction eliminates this coupling on range and azimuth direction, and is necessary for the complex two-dimensional imaging.