[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.

[meandog]

Both the 24 and 17 owe their illustrative successes to the MK-IV Norden bombsight--it allowed the strategic daylight bombing campaign, something that the Brit Lancasters were unable to accomplish; therefore carpet bombing at night after the pathfinders lit up the area, and causing the majority of the unnecessary collateral damage to Germany