Aero Vintage Books

According the the fact sheet at NMUSAF, there were only 18 B-17D aircraft actually made on the Army's order for 42; the balance are reported to have been built as B-17C aircraft and sent to England under "Lend-Lease."

According to what I've read, there were 21 B-17 aircraft in the first mass flight from California to Hawaii; according to Prof. Gordon W. Prange's At Dawn We Slept | The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor, on December 6, 1941, the Hawaiian Air Force held only 12 B-17 aircraft, only half of them flyable (someone apparently forgot that such aircraft require spare-parts to be kept flyable; they undergo serious stress, wear & tear, just by take-off, landing, and airtime, as those of you who really know, really know!). IIRC, one-half were stripped for spares to keep the other half flying.

That would leave 9 B-17 aircraft to fly on in the 2nd mass flight, to the Phillipines, and two mass flights equals lots of the above for those aircraft; I'll bet there were only 4 of those (maybe only 3) flyable by December 7/8, and only 3 were reported to have got off the ground in the Phillipines, and apparently none of the six flyable at Hickam.

I'm wondering which aircraft were what; with the 13 aircraft that flew into the war (after taking off on December 6 at 15 minute intervals), that makes 33 B-17 aircraft total in or over the Pacific on December 6/7. Only 18 of the grand total could have been B-17D, the rest B-17C (AFAIK).

I know that the Swooze is said to be a B-17D, and flew in the first two mass flights, the second of which was reported as May, 1941. The "Handbook of Operation And Flight Instructions For The Model B-17D Bombardment Airplane Manufactured By Boeing Aircraft Company" for the B-17D, of which I have only a copy of the cover-page and page 30 (armament diagram), Technical Order No. 01-20ED-1, is dated October 1, 1941. I'm wondering about this too; was the Army just late in getting a 'D' flight manual published (this may be a rhetorical question, I'm not sure!)?

Thanks for any light you can shed on the subject,

Regards, John

Just to further this discussion, according to Pete Bowers in his Fortress in the Sky (not an infallible source but pretty close), the Air Corps issued a contract on September 20, 1939, for 38 B-17Cs. These were issued Air Corps serials 40-2042 through 40-2079. The deliveries of the B-17C contract was completed by November 1940. Twenty of these B-17Cs were set aside for the RAF.

Contract Change 1 was issued on the original date of the contract (9/20/39) that specified additional equipment that increased the contract price.

Contract Change 2 was issued on April 4, 1940, that ordered an additional 42 B-17Cs with significant equipment changes. These aircraft had serial numbers 40-3059 through 40-3100 assigned.

Contract Change 3 was issued on September 6, 1940, that, due to the significant additional equipment changes, redesignated these aircraft as B-17Ds. The 42 under this contract change were delivered as B-17Ds between February 3, 1941, and April 29, 1941. (The Swoose was delivered on April 25, 1941.)

The B-17E contract was approved on August 30, 1940, and the first delivery on the B-17E contract was on September 27, 1941.

At the time of Pearl Harbor, the Air Corps had accepted (approximately) 185 B-17s as follows:

13 Y1B-17s
1 Y1B-17A
39 B-17Bs
38 B-17Cs
42 B-17Ds
52 (approx) B-17Es