B-17 Artifacts

I am a collector of items pertaining to the B-17 and the US Army Air Forces. From the early designs, to the B-17G's, and the later variants.

In my collection, I have original manuals, Aviation Sextants, Radio Equipment, Gun Sights, Cameras, Aviation Artwork, head phones, throat mics, ammo, pins, and much more. I am looking for Gun sights, Inert Bombs, and ANY equipment originally used on the Flying Fortress.

  
I flew in a B-17 on the 20th of July. The Confederate air force was touring in their  1944 B-17 the "Sentimental Journey " Arizona Wing- Commemorative Air Force Website At Lost Nation Airport, here in Mentor, So being the B-17 buff that I am , I took the Monday off, and watched them fly in, they brought in a Heinkel He-111, a Junkers Ju-88, and the B-17G. The next day I took my wife Nancy and my son Jake to see them, and while we were their I talked to the pilot, and for a fee, I went up for a 40 minute flight. IT WAS INCREDIBLE!!!    I got the front most seat, the bombardier seat during take-off, that's the one at the very front of the aircraft, the plastic bubble, WOW!, it was incredible to see the engines start up, taxi, then hurtle down the runway at 120 mph with nothing but a 1/4 inch bubble of plastic in front of you. After about 10 minutes, I crawled/walked around the aircraft, absolutely awesome. Its hard to describe the feeling, with the sounds, vibrations, smells, and sights.

 
 
 
 

 

Specifications:
Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress
Dimensions:
Wing span:	103 ft. 9 in (31.6 m)
Length:	74 ft. 9 in (22.8 m)
Height:	19 ft. 1 in (5.8 m)
Wing Area:	1,420 sq ft (132 sq m)
Weights:
Empty:	32,720 lb (14,855 kg)
Normal Loaded:	49,500 lb (22,475 kg)
Maximum Overloaded:	60,000 lb (27,240 kg)
Performance:
Maximum Speed:	295 m.p.h. (472 km/h) at 25,000 ft (7,625 m)
Service Ceiling:	35,000 ft (10,670 m)
Normal Range:	(normal fuel & max bombs), 1,100 miles (1,760 km) @ 220 mph (352 km/h) @ 25,000 ft (7,625 m)
Powerplant:
Four 1,200 hp Wright R-1820-97 nine cylinder air-cooled single row radial engines. General Electric Type B-22 exhaust driven turbo-superchargers, installed under engine nacelles.
Armament:
Thirteen 50-cal. machine-guns. Normal bomb load 6,000 lbs (2,724 kg). Largest bomb type carried is 2,000 lb (908 kg).

In September of 1941, a new Fortress appeared with an extensively modified empennage. Gone was the pert fin and rudder riding precariously behind the stabilizer. Instead, a broad yet graceful dorsal fin rose from amidships and enveloped a deadly stinger of twin .50-cal. machine guns. A remote controlled belly turret held two more .50s. This was the B-17E, of which 112 were built. Four hundred more followed but with a manned Sperry ball turret replacing the remote system. The B-17E was lengthened to 73 feet 10 inches to accommodate the new defensive tail position. Top speed was 317 mph, cruising at over 200 mph with 4,000 pounds of bombs.

The Pearl Harbor attack of December 7,1941 finally brought the United States into the war and production of the B-17 rapidly increased. By July 1942 the US began forming the Eighth Air Force in Britain, equipped with B-17Es. The 'E' represented an important improvement over the earlier B-17s, in that it had a tail turret, so eliminating a previous defensive blind spot. On August 17,1942 United States B-17s carried out a bombing raid on the railway yards at Rouen in France. The real offensive, however, started on January 27,1943, when B-17s of the USAAF made their first attack on Germany. Initially, casualties were very high because they attacked during daylight hours to achieve greater accuracy and because proper formation flying (to enable a group of airplanes to defend each other with crossfire) had not yet been formulated. Delivery of the B-17G (the major production version) helped. The 'G' was the first variant to have a gun turret under the nose, so increasing the armament to 13 guns.

Production of the similar B-17F was undertaken by Douglas and Vega, a subsidiary of the Lockheed Aircraft Corp., was taking its toll in speed. The B-17F, though now armed with eleven .50-cal. guns, could only reach 299 mph, but landing speed was up to 90 mph! Service ceiling was 37,500 feet and range 2,880 miles. It took twenty-five and a half minutes to climb to 20,000 feet. Three thousand, four hundred B-17Fs were produced by the three companies.

By September 1943, the Flying Fortress showed its final shape. During firepower tests on the XB-40, a modified B-17F, the advantage of a chin turret was clearly proven and a new series, labeled B-17G, sported this nasal appendage. The Bendix turret held two .50-cal. guns and this model had a total of twelve of these weapons with 6,380 rounds of ammunition. In all, there were 8,680 B-17Gs built by Boeing, Vega, and Douglas to make this the largest production variation. Following the first Model 299, the Air Corps purchased 12,725 B-17 type aircraft.

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Perhaps there were other aircraft that were even more pleasant to fly than the B-17, because it did have its drawbacks: for example, the forces acting on the ailerons were relatively high, and the rudder felt as if it were set in concrete. But it was much more important that the aircraft was easy to fly and land. When one had become accustomed to the higher all-up weight and the strange instruments, it could be compared with our He 111 in the degree of effort needed to fly it.

What was really outstanding about the B-17 which made it, together with the B-24 Liberator the standard day heavy bomber in the European theater of war? It certainly was not fast in low altitudes; only the exhaust-driven turbo superchargers gave the B-17 its good performance at higher altitudes. All in all, that was for me the most admirable thing about American planning, namely the consequential pursuit of a concept once it had been recognized as correct, in this case the effectiveness of raids carried out by well-armed high-altitude bombers flying in close formations.

One must remember that several years would pass between planning and execution of a concept. Possibly only the idea of keeping the attacking fighters at bay with heavily armed bombers flying in close formation and firing from all 'portholes' had to be revised. This consequently happened after the raid on Schweinfurt which, due to the long distance involved, had to be carried out without fighter escort, During this raid the USAAF bombers suffered heavy losses from twin-engined Zerstorer and single-seat fighters attacking with rocket missiles, which naturally caused quite a crisis. The correct solution to this problem was soon found: elimination of the sluggish, rocket-carrying Luftwaffe 'destroyers' by escort fighters -- and several versions of these, with excellent performance, were also soon available. Nor did the rather poorly adjusted control forces on the American bombers have much detrimental effect, as this was certainly not decisive during the approach at great height, and even less so after the bombers had been equipped with an excellent three-dimensional autopilot. It must be stressed that the respectable speed of the B-17 at higher altitudes was due solely to its excellent exhaust-driven turbo-superchargers. But for the production of these devices one required not only the know-how but also large quantities of heat-resisting materials which we were lacking in Germany.

Occasionally I would receive via Switzerland foreign reports on German aircraft, and it was interesting to read that they quite often not only praised the construction of the machines but the engines as well, more often than not concluding that the Germans just did not have the necessary heat-resistant metals for even better performance.