FORTRESS AIR WAR WWII POSTER

The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engine heavy bomber developed for the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). The B-17 was primarily employed by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) in the daylight precision strategic bombing campaign of World War II against German industrial and military targets. The B-17 also participated to a lesser extent in the War in the Pacific, early in World War II, where it conducted raids against Japanese shipping and airfields. From its pre-war inception, the USAAC (later, the USAAF) touted the aircraft as a strategic weapon; it was a potent, high-flying, long-range bomber that was able to defend itself, and to return home despite extensive battle damage. Its reputation quickly took on mythic proportions, and widely circulated stories and photos of notable examples of B-17s surviving battle damage increased its iconic status. With a service ceiling greater than any of its Allied contemporaries, the B-17 established itself as an effective weapons system, dropping more bombs than any other U.S. aircraft in World War II. Of the 1.5 million tons of bombs dropped on Germany and its occupied territories by U.S. aircraft, 640,000 tonnes were dropped from B-17s. As of 2015, 10 B-17 Flying Fortresses remain airworthy. Based upon an archived Office of War Information government photograph of a Boeing B-17F at the end of a BOEING Company production line in 1942.