[meandog]

Boeing built the greatest plane in history with the 17......

You'd find some argument with the B-24 crowd. It was harder to fly but apparently better able to defend itself.

[Allegra]

Check it out.

[Strategerist]

There actually were more B-24s bombing Germany than B-17s.

The B-17 had the greatest Public Relations campaign of any aircraft in history...in the early war it was thus horrendously overrated, particularly against ships.

Very early in the war it was erroneously believed and widely reported in the press that a B-17 out of the Phillipines had sunk the Battleship Hiei. Things were going badly for the US then so everyone just latched on to the good news and weren't skeptical.

And for quite some time after the battle, the media and general public were under the impression that the Japanese carriers at Midway had been destroyed by Army Air Corps B-17s, not Navy dive bombers.

[Buffalo Head]

"You'd find some argument with the B-24 crowd."

B24's could fly faster, higher and further with a greater bomb load than the B17's and dropped more bomb tonnage on the Germans. The Flying Fortress's name and a couple of movies grabbed most of the glory and fame.

[section9]

Boeing built the greatest plane in history with the 17......

You'd find some argument with the B-24 crowd. It was harder to fly but apparently better able to defend itself

Uh, sorry, but get in line. The greatest bombers in history were the B-29 Stratofortresses. Longer range, higher ceiling, bigger bombloads, and the SILVERPLATE B-29's were stripped down and highly maneuverable (they had to be to drop the atomic bomb and escape the itinerant Zero or two...).

Their biggest drawback? Hard to get out of if you had an accident on takeoff: filled with incendiaries, they made a huge fireball and didn't have convenient escape hatches.

Be Seeing You,

Chris