Flying in a B17 on Friday!

You will be tarred and feathered if you don't take a camera and the post pictures here.

 

Good for you! You will have a great experience in a great airplane.

 

In case you didn't know. The B-17 was Boeing design model 299. It was initiated around 1934, first flown in 1935 and over the next 5 years just hummed along as a fairly successful four engined airplane that nobody really knew what to do with except an unknown U.S. Army Air Force navigator named Curtiss Lemay . In 1941 it was improved with the addition of a larger and more stabilizing vertical tail, the horizontal tail of a new design, Model 345 ( B-29), and a lengthened nose section, designated the B-17E. A new nose dome was added in 1942 as well as other improvements and it became the B-17F. That was the version that actually went to war in the ETO. The E model briefly saw action on Dec. 7, 1941 in Oahu. As the war progressed the seven year old design was pressed into action against an up-dated and very aggressive enemy fighter force where it sustained unbelievable attacks as history has shown. The crews as well as the airplane endured the worst that could be imagined and NEVER turned a mission back from enemy action. To counter enemy attack strategies a chin turret was added to the nose armament and much armor was also added, inexorably increasing the weight of the airplane but it never complained. It still carried the maximum bomb load for the maximum range while its gross weight went from a bit over 34,000 pounds to 64,000 pounds. Claimed speeds of 300 MPH were actually more like 165 MPH but it was tough, reliable, and gave the best service that anyone could expect. Believe it or not, the service ceiling was 41.000 feet but it never flew there in action. Unpressurized and unheated the crews could experience -70F temperatures at times when , for sometimes as long as eight hours they were on oxygen and fighting off German fighters and enduring accurate and deadly flak, many of whom came back with frozen feet and hands.
There was a team of excellent engineers lead by a man named Ed Wells who at age 34 created the airplane. It was way over designed because they were transitioning from a tube and fabric era to a stressed skin monocoque construction and in Boeing fashion they made certain that it was strong. The wing was an interesting combination of square aluminum tubing Warren truss spars and ribs with a dual skin, the inner of which was a corrugation and the outer a very durable thick covering. It proved to be almost indestructible.
The airfoil was a symmetrical NACA 0018 at the root and 0009 at the tip with 3.5 degrees incidence and no twist. The wing structure and loft was NEVER modified during the life of the airplane.
Well, that's enough for me, I guess.
Swiches