Born of the isolationist mentality of post-World War I America, the B-17 was originally designed as a weapon to keep the enemy fleets far from American shores.

In 1935 the Army held a competition for a new heavy bomber. In those days any company wishing to compete did so at their own expense. Boeing’s was a veteran builder of airliners, having built the first modern all-metal airliner (designated the Model 247) with the twin-engines of most large aircraft of that day. When Boeing rolled out its entry, the Model 299 was a completely radical four-engine design. Many of the leaders of the U.S. Army Air Corps felt the plane was too large and would be too much for two pilots to handle.

Thus the 299 lost the competition to the Douglas Aircraft Corporation entry, a twin engine bomber later given the designation B-18. However, an order for several experimental aircraft was placed in order to continue further development of the project. It was eventually designated as the B-17. When debuted to the press, one reporter wrote that it looked like a “flying fortress”; the name stuck.

The early B-17 was anything but a fortress. It had no power-operated turrets and the belly gunner sat on a bicycle seat in a tub and could only fire toward the rear. There was no tail gun position. However, the future air leaders of World War II, Hap Arnold, Ira Eaker and Curt LeMay saw the great potential of the B-17 and began to develop the B17 from a coastal defense aircraft into a strategic offensive weapon. Through a series of highly publicized stunts, they were able to verify the new concept of strategic bombing.

Since America was in the throws of a great depression, funding for development of aircraft was slow in coming. In 1939 war broke out in Europe. The American Army released several B-17s to England to evaluate in combat. Its shortcomings in defending itself became evident and improvements were ordered for defensive purposes. Again, due to depression-era budget, improvements came slowly. America sent the B-17C to England in 1940. By the time of the United States’ entry into World War II in December, 1941, all the Army had managed to do was build a new “D” model and upgrade the existing “C” models to “D” standards. The Army’s inventory at the time was only thirty-eight “C” models and forty-two “D” models. The simultaneous attacks on Pearl Harbor and Clark Field in the Philippines destroyed most of the B-17s in existence.

However, the few remaining B-17s fought harder than could have been imagined. It was in those first six months of savage battle that the B-17 earned the nickname “Flying Fortress”. One B-17C nicknamed the “Swoose” that fought in the savagery of the Philippine campaign survives today and awaits restoration before being placed in the Smithsonian Institute. The Army Air Corps’ first Congressional Medal of Honor winner, Colin Kelly, earned the medal for valor while flying a B-17C in the Philippines.

In the summer of 1941 Boeing had begun a re-design of the B-17. Known as the “late” model Fortress, it had an extended fuselage with a large ventral rib and an increased rudder. The new Fortress also had a tail gun position and power turrets on the top and belly. The new B-17E was ready for the battle of Midway six months after Pearl Harbor but until that time the early Fortress held the line during those critical first months of the war in the Pacific.