[fugazi]

It would be interesting to find an economic study on bomber production. How big is too big (the amounts of fuel and aircrew lost when your bomber becomes a hard-to-miss target for enemy pilots and AA gunners? The B-17 was half the size of the B-19, but what is the point on the curve where a more economically produced airframe would become too small for strategic bombing?

Like how the Navy establishment loved battleships. But there weren't any glorious old-fashioned battleship-versus-battleship shootouts during the second world war but we had an incredible amount of bang for our buck from the rather less glamorous destroyers.

[doorgunner69]

The B-36 comes to mind as too big, too complicated, and an easy target for early Russian fighters.

[DFG]

B-19 Cockpit https://jalopnik.com/americas-real-wwii-flying-fortress-was-the-massive-doug-1632864365

[mosesdapoet]

Rtmrmber when it was display3ed at Chicago’s then named Municipal (later named Midway) airport

[Fiji Hill]

B-19--Slim & Slam (1941)

[SES1066]

It would appear that the B-19 lost out to the B-36, an even bigger and longer ranged bomber that was based, like Howard Hughes ‘Spruce Goose’ on UK loss to Germany. 230ft wingspan, 6 piston engines (initially) and a 10,000 mile range, it went into service for the USAF / SAC in 1949. The boast / gripe was that it only landed to reenlist the aircrew. The Jimmy Stewart movie “Strategic Air Command” (1955) was almost a documentary about this amazing US Bomber.

[Fiji Hill]

There was a battleship-to-battleship shootout at the Battle of the Surigao Strait in 1944.

[AppyPappy]

Best kept secret of WW2? A Mosquito had the same bomb load capability as a B-17.

[DuncanWaring]

...there weren’t any glorious old-fashioned battleship-versus-battleship shootouts...

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What about Washington vs. Kirishima?

https://www.historylink.org/File/7128

http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/Our_Culture/one_marine_one_ship.htm