B-17 Flying Fortress

Introduction

by Brian Toelle, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

When it was first unveiled a news reporter called the monstrous B-17 a "Flying Fortress." Four years of war would prove the sobriquet true and earn the B-17 a reputation as arguably the greatest, multi-engine combat aircraft of World War II.

The men that flew them loved everything about the plane -- especially the bomber's ability to take a tremendous amount battle of and still make it back to friendly territory. In one celebrated instance a B-17 was nearly cut in half during a collision with a German fighter and still flew for 90 more minutes. It broke in half only after it had landed and came to a full stop.

The commanders that ordered them into the skies loved them for other reasons. The B-17's wing design and four super-charged engines meant it could carry heavy bomb loads to targets in devastating raids. More than one would echo the belief that "Without the B-17 we might have lost the war."

Yet despite its storied past and its role in titling the balance of World War II, the B-17 nearly never came about.

Beginnings

The development of the B-17 was shaped by a number of events, many of which occurred before the aircraft was even on the drawing board. When it entered World War I in 1917, the United States' Army Air Corps (AAC), in the words of Hap Arnold, "had no theories of aerial combat, or of any air operations except armed reconnaissance." By the end of the war, the concept of the air force as a means of bombarding the enemy had gained wide acceptance in American air power circles.

General Billy Mitchell took up the doctrine of aerial bombardment with all the fervor of a true believer. Mitchell argued "the [enemy] entire nation is, or should be, considered a combatant force." In other words, argued Mitchell, the old practice of drawing a distinction between combatants and noncombatants was no longer valid. Anything that enabled an opponent to conduct war, was a legitimate target. Only air power, argued Mitchell, could be brought to bear on the enemy's means of production, "hitting the enemy's great nerve centers at the very beginning of the war so as to paralyze them to the greatest extent possible." It was the beginning of the doctrine of strategic bombing -- warfare designed to cripple an enemy's ability to make war.

This philosophy shaped how the B-17 and other aircraft were eventually employed in World War II. However the original development of the long range bomber was defensive, not offensive. Mitchell played a pivotal role here as well. With great oceans on either side of its continental land mass, the United States was only subject to serious attack by enemy naval forces. At the same time, the two oceans, which did such an excellent job in providing defense buffers, also necessitated the construction of two large and expensive fleets to defend the sea approaches. Mitchell argued that a long range bomber force could provide an effective and relatively inexpensive means of smashing any enemy fleet.

Vociferously, and abrasively, insisting that his concept was correct, Mitchell conducted a number of demonstrations in the 1920's to prove his point. Aircraft were brought to bear against naval targets, culminating in a test involving the former German battleship Ostfriesland on July 21, 1921. Seven of Mitchell's MB-2 bombers and their cargoes of 2000 pound bombs sent the "unsinkable" battleship to the bottom in a mere 21 minutes. Additional tests sent other ships to the bottom with equal ease.

Despite Mitchell's personal unpopularity with top ranking officers, who eventually court-martialed him, his successes could not be ignored. A joint Army-Navy Board concluded that an adequate number of bombers could be a decisive factor in coastal defense. The Navy was ordered to share this responsibility with the AAC. An order they saw as an encroachment into their domain. As a result admirals used their influence to hamper development of an Army long range bomber whenever they could. The intra-service rivalry nearly miscarried the B-17's birth a number of times.

But the squabbling could not ignore both the facts of Mitchell's success and the rapid growth enjoyed by aviation in the 1920's. In a short period of time, aircraft design underwent revolutionary changes, many of which had direct influences on the eventual design of the B-17.

In the late 1920's Boeing designed the Model 200, also known as the MonoMail, a low mono-winged, mail carrier. The follow-up Model 221 was also able to carry passengers. Boeing took a number of design features from these planes and then produced the Model 214. This twin engine bomber was also known as the B-9. Boeing hoped to obtain a contract for its construction but lost the bid to the Martin B-10.

Boeing continued to design commercial aircraft eventually producing the Model 247, capable of carrying 10 passengers plus a crew of 3. Even with air travel in its infancy, the plane proved to be a major commercial success for Boeing.

In mid-1933 Boeing was given an opportunity to put together the lessons it had learned. The AAC began "Project A" intended to produce: "a plane with a range of 5000 miles that could protect Alaska and Hawaii". The following February the War Department allocated $609,300 for its development. Originally this plane was referred to as the XLRB-1, for the Experimental Longer Range Bomber, but when built was redesignated the XB-15. This particular bomber was intended strictly for experimentation and not production. The data obtained from its construction and flight tests would be applied to later bomber designs. The AAC was also looking for another aircraft to replace the aging and nearly obsolete Martin B-10. In August 1934, a number of companies, including Boeing, received the specifications for a new bomber to be ready within a year. Among the requirements was that the bomber be of multi-engine design. Boeing's engineers interpreted this as meaning four engines, something not considered before for a bomber. The construction of such a large, four-engine bomber purely on speculative terms was a great financial risk but the prospect of winning a government contract for 220 planes was very appealing. On September 26th Boeing's board of directors allocated $275,000 for the construction of the new plane which they designated the Model 299.

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© Copyright 1996 by David W. Tschanz.
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