[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

[tanknetter]

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.

The Superfort also had issues with magnesium components, especially those in the engines. They had (at least early on) a nasty tendency to get hot enough to catch fire, with a cascading impact through the wing ... resulting in the spar being severed.

[meandog]

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...).

No argument here...the 29's were great aircraft. BUT, they required a lot of maintenance just to keep them airworthy and suffered a tremendous amount of in-flight mechanical problems when compared to the 17s and 24s.

[Robert A Cook PE]

B-24 was the crate they boxed up the B-17 inside to ship it overseas.

B-24 beat the 17 in range, payload, and patrol time. B-29 was too late, too expensive (more than the Manhattan project!) and had unreliable engines. Among hundreds of other mechanical and design problems. But engines never were reliable.

But the 8th air force would (and Brit's) refused to let enough be released for mid-Atlantic anti-sub duties. Caused a lot of loss of life, lost of ships lost that could have been saved.