a bombardier on a B-17 for 30 missions during WW2 left his flight jacket to his son, but not much info

the 8th Air Force, 92nd Bomb Group, 326th squadron, and was in Europe from February, 1943 until returning to the U.S. at the End of April, 1944.

there was a mid-air collision over friendly territory at some point, the crew bailed out, the plane crashed. 

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=4464766247113983&set=gm.10165053519242728&idorvanity=9261317727

"Borate Bomber" -- The Forest Service did not discover unti the 1956 season, that a borate mixture for fire fighting sterilized the ground. They first started in Lake Elsinore Ca (Near San Diego) in 1954

 https://forestservicemuseum.pastperfectonline.com/photo/4425BC77-1AEE-48E1-AE9A-522470117511

borate bomber is an affectionate historical nickname for an aerial firefighting airtanker. 

The term originated in the mid-1950s when pilots first began dropping water mixed with sodium calcium borate—developed by the Pacific Coast Borax Company—to slow down and suppress wildland fires.

Pure water evaporated too quickly before hitting hot flames, so chemists added borate compounds to improve retardant capabilities.

https://www.aerovintage.com/2022/02/16/the-first-b-17-borate-bomber/

Shoo Shoo Baby is ready for display, when there is space made for it... I think, that's a good problem to have, more restored warbirds than space available

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=28297101949881838&set=gm.10165019921312728&idorvanity=9261317727

in 1962, the CIA found a Russian ice drift station used to monitor US submarines, and to develope advanced Arctic anti-submarine warfare technology, (thank you George! ) ( A true story about a B 17, submarines, and an adventurer)

The Russian drift station had been abandoned when the ice runway the Soviets had been using to receive restocks of supplies, had been demolished by a pressure ridge, making it impossible for any more incoming flights to reach the station. 

The Soviets were forced to abandon their station, confident that, with no way on or off the drift station, all their secrets would eventually be consumed by the Arctic.

The U.S. employed similar ice stations to keep tabs on Soviet submarine movement, and being able to see how the Soviets equipped their own drift stations—including the tech they employed and any research they left behind—would be invaluable intelligence.

On May 28, 1962, a B-17 took off from Resolute Bay, a Royal Canadian Air Force base, carrying a paratrooper and Russian language expert from the Air Force.

 A first attempt two days earlier had failed when the crew couldn’t locate the station, but this time, they found a different and newer drift station, and the two men parachuted down onto the ice. Once Major Smith radioed a positive report, the B-17 returned to base, where crews affixed the equipment needed for Fulton’s Skyhook to—hopefully—retrieve the men. LeSchack and Smith had 72 hours to search the drift station.

Robert Fulton, son of the president of the Mack Truck Company, had already lived quite a life before he came to the attention of the CIA. Born in New York in 1909, Fulton had studied architecture in Vienna, visited King Tut’s tomb in 1923, spent 17 months on a “motorcycle adventure” across 32 countries, (wrote the book One Man Caravan that I posted about in 2011 https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/search?q=robert+Fulton)   and turned a fascination with photography into a job with Pan Am “taking pictures for the development of the trans-Pacific air route.”

In 1958, he introduced the Fulton aerial retrieval system, otherwise known as Skyhook. The system utilized a harness that was attached to a 500-foot braided nylon line. When it was time for pickup, a portable helium bottle would inflate a balloon, which lifted the line to a height where it could be easily hooked by the pickup plane’s angled steel “horns.”

It was used in the 2008 blockbuster The Dark Knight, after Bruce Wayne asks his engineer Lucius Fox about a way to get aboard an airplane “without it landing.” With a smirk, Fox tells him, “The CIA had a program back in the ’60s for getting their people out of hotspots called Skyhook. We could look into that.”

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a73274458/batmans-skyhook-cia-mission/

It’s estimated that there are only about four B-17s left that are flying in the United States.

 https://www.kptv.com/2026/05/05/historic-wwii-aircraft-lacey-lady-being-restored-flight/

B17 being worked on in NZ by Avspecs.

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10239853139455935&set=pcb.3370388743137309

8Th Air Force Bomber Command, B-17 nose art of tough caveman Alley Oop, hurling a bomb while riding the back of a terradactyl, 325th Bomb Squadron

https://images.google.com/hosted/life/6b2bdc19efecc54c.html

Alina ordered a copy of this book after watching Masters Of The Air... and got a hell of a surprise... she got a signed copy, by the author, and Rosie Rosenthal, and more handwritten cool stuff

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=26158815357082751&set=pcb.10164176411427728

a B 17 in Papua New Guinea

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=2298838260527690&set=pcb.10164031243762728

wow, what a cool project this must have been back in the day when crew members were alive to meet and collect signatures from

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1370977924491987&set=gm.10163884908912728&idorvanity=9261317727

cool book on B 17s!

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=4051963615115489&set=pcb.10163581313687728

What a cool thing to pass down to your kids and grand kids.... what you did, what you were a part of, the work you did to help the cause of freedom

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10226027847189833&set=pcb.10161560068907728

grandmothers I’d card when she worked for Boeing. 

When any employee left the company and at the end of the war they all had to hand over their id card

But for some reason this family that worked for Boeing for 5 generations, and eight of this family were building the B-17, had a way around that. 

I'm glad they did, this is very cool

a mangled propeller is about all that remains of a B-17 bomber that crashed by the Porcupine Mountains (Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the Yoop!)

On April 18th, 1944 the B-17 was on a training mission when it left Sioux City Iowa headed to Marquette. During the flight an engine caught fire and they were ordered to land in Duluth Minnesota for repairs. Unfortunately, the underpowered airplane was not going to make it. Fortunately, the crew bailed out and landed safely on the ground.

 The bomber crashed in the trees somewhere south of the Lake In The Clouds

The flight crew managed to walk to Silver City. At the time, the old boarded-up gift shop was a bar and the airmen waited there for their rescue. The military quickly came in and recovered the wreckage of the airplane especially the machine guns that were onboard. One of the propellers was left at the bar in Silver City as a reminder of the incident.

https://lostinmichigan.net/the-b-17-crash-in-the-porkies/

Anyone else see that “Amazing Stories” episode from 1985 about the ball-turret gunner stuck in a B-17 with a jammed up landing gear that has to make a belly landing?

written and directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Casey Siemaszko as the trapped gunner and Kevin Costner as the pilot, an equally unknown Kiefer Sutherland as the radio operator, focusing on the gunner's imaginative efforts to survive after his turret jams and landing gear breaks during a WWII bombing run.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0511124/

good one!

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=2094132844661162&set=gm.1169472872061459&idorvanity=501116445563775

In 1942, Frank Szymanski switched from making cars on an assembly line to assembling B17 bombers for Boeing. He then realized that Boeing did not have a clue how to build wings for B17 quickly, perfectly, efficiently... so he showed them how to reduce the time from 20 hours to 2.

his ability to see the obvious, that management was oblivious to because they do paperwork, not stepping onto the assembly line and earning some calluses, brought the production of B17s from 14 planes a month to over 362.

And Boeing was weeks away from losing the contract, because their production was too slow

What was the initial problem Boeing wasn't clued into? Heat expansion. 

Hot rivets on one end of the wing would cause just enough thermal expansion that rivet holes on the other end of the wing wouldn't line up. 

So, he demonstrated that starting the installation around the main structure points, with the workers spread out, reduced thermal expansion, placing hot rivets at various distant points, where the metal was cool, spread the heat out, reduced the amount in any one area, and the rivet holes didn't get shifted elsewhere on the wing. 

If you want to listen to 40 minutes, plus commercials, etc that never seem to answer the question, until 70 percent of the way through the video, doesn't even start to address the issue until 14 minutes into the video after wasting your time with history, flashbacks, etc... then here it is, and as always, increase the play speed from 1.0 to 1.25 because video makers are deliberately slowing down the speed to waste your time for stats to earn more from You Tube

A cool graphic comparing the size of a WWII B-17 bomber (green) with a modern F-15C fighter (red). It’s amazing how today’s fighters are almost as big and heavy as four-engine heavy bombers of the past.

https://x.com/RealAirPower1/status/1983580818736886188

there's a digital collection of 1920-1945 military aircraft you might want to look through

it's got a lot to look through