![]() ![]() However, the War Department curbed further expansion of the Air Corps and its roles, and even restricted all Air Corps aircraft to operating within 100 nautical miles (190 km) off the coast. Army made the most of the flight and heavily publicized it in news reels and newspaper stories. ![]() Navy protested that the flight was not coastal defense, but the U.S. The B-17s even made several passes over the ship to allow for still and motion picture photography. The situation didn’t get better after May 1938, when to prove the B-17’s capabilities, three plans from the 2nd Bombardment Group set out to intercept the Italian passenger liner Rex, 700 miles (1,125 km) offshore.Īlthough the weather was bad, the B-17 Flying Fortresses successfully intercepted Rex after a four-hour flight. ![]() As a result there was a push from the Navy to scale down the production – reducing the first series model, the B-17B to just thirty-nine aircraft. Navy officials feared that the USAAC might take on a maritime patrol role. The return flight proved to be equally impressive and all six aircrews were awarded the prestigious Mackay Trophy for the “most meritorious flight of the year.”īecause the B-17 had been designed with coastal patrol duties in mind, U.S. That included a good-will mission to South America, where six Flying Fortresses took off from Miami and flew to Buenos Aires in 28 hours with just one stop in Lima, Peru. Douglas went on receive an order for 133 aircraft, which became the B-18 Bolo.ĭespite the fact that Boeing failed to secure a larger contract, development continued and the aircraft kept breaking records. As a result, Boeing only secured a contract for 13 YB-17s, instead of the expected 60. However, after 40 flight-hours, the sole prototype crashed after its elevator gust-lock was still engaged during landing. Boeing’s executives put everything on the line, investing $432,034 – equivalent to about $9.2 million today – at a time when the country was in midst of the Great Depression. Today Boeing may be an aerospace giant, but that certainly wasn’t the case in the early 1930s when Boeing – a company with just 600 employees – competed with Douglas and Martin for a contract from the United States War Department – the precursor to the modern Department of Defense – to build 200 bombers. While most know of its contribution to the war effort, often lost is how the B-17 came to be and how it had its first enemies were the United States Navy and even American isolationists. Boeing had sold the bomber to the United States military to be used as a coastal patrol aircraft, but it was soon developed into a crucial aircraft. Most of the world’s bombers even in the mid-1930s were twin-engined monoplanes, and the four-engine B-17 promised greater range and ability to carry larger bomb loads. The B-17 Flying Fortress Was a Quantum Leap in Aviation Design: When the first Boeing B-17 “Flying Fortress” took its maiden flight on Jit proved to be a quantum leap over earlier United States Army Air Corp (USAAC) bombers then in service. ![]()
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