Looking Back: We cover the war

The Flying Fortress


Primary among the "sky destroyers" in our feature of that title was the B-17 Boeing Flying Fortress, the military's standard heavy-duty bomber. It became America's prime strategic weapon in the European theater. Few of the planes were in service at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, but production was ramped up quickly. The Fortresses were renowned for their ability to remain airborne despite taking brutal fire. Reports of B-17s landing with large chunks of fuselage shot off were not uncommon. The Memphis Belle was the most famous of the Flying Fortresses as the first heavy bomber in the European war theatre to complete 25 combat missions and keep her entire crew alive. She is immortalized in a 1944 documentary by William Wyler, which spawned a 1990s feature of the same name. Few Flying Fortresses remain; they are occasionally seen at airshows.


In the photo at left, a Flying Fortress is shown in 1999, flying over Puget
Sound in Washington State, after its restoration. It's now hangared in
Renton, Washington. For more information, see the Museum of Flight's Web site.