History
The development
Commissioned by the US Army Air Force, her specifications were those of a "battleship of the skies"; a multi-engined bomber capable of 200 to 250 mph at 10,000 feet with a cruising speed of 170 to 200 mph, a range of 6 to 10 hours and a service ceiling of 25,000 feed. Some designers of the Boeing Airplane Company proved something like vision by not deciding as usual in favor of two but in favor of four jet engines. Even if they wanted to reach more height thus primarily over the aim area they also caused so anyway that Boeing Model 299 turned fundamentally bigger than the outlines of the competition this out. The work on the drawing-board started on June 18th, 1934.
When newspaper reporters were first shown the Model 299 in Boeing's Seattle factory on 16th July 1935, the aircraft simply took their breath away.
"A regular fortress", one of them said, "a fortress with wings!"
The Boeing Airplane Company lieked the name used in the headlines, so decided to register it as a trade mark. "The Flying Fortress" was born.
The first flight
Les Tower led the prototype to Boeing Field for a successful first flight on July 28th, 1935. Main purpose of the new bomber was the defense of the United States an invasion fleet through. When the thirteen pre-mass-production aircrafts in the US Army air corps arrived got her the model number YB-17. Y stood for the evaluation, B for bomber and 17 for the seventeenth bomber design, that the USAAC had accepted. It was a fighter plane which surpassed all demanded features for speed, range, path speed and bomb load.
"Hitler has built a fortress around Europe but he has forgotten the roof!"
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
President Roosevelt's realization that involvement in a war in Europe could not be avoided, combined with the bombers good press, ensured that it was not long before the first orders were placed with Boeing for the production of the turbo-equipped B-17B's. Luckily, the B-17 had one more feature: its adaptability to further development. Thirty-nine B-17Bs were delivered to USAAC when the war broke out in Europe 1939, followed by thirty-eight B-17Cs and forty-two B-17Ds; new improved designs that could give 323 mph top speed at 25,000 feet. In 1941, the RAF were sent twenty B-17Cs and Bomber Command designated Them Foortress Is.