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‘ATTENTION YOUNG MEN. (10′) AMCU SV of a B-17 in flight to the right over clouds –aircraft performs a wing-over away from camera then sideslips down in a shallow left turn. (38′) MS EXT group of college boys on an unidentified campus carrying their luggage. (41′) MCU EXT as college boys form a group, then walk toward camera. (50′) CU EXT low angle of two rows of men in civilian clothes carrying their luggage. (54′) CU EXT low angle, nine cadets on flight line walking past nose of B-17. (62′) CU INT SV of pilot of B-l7 at the controls. (66′) CU INT high angle RV of a navigator at work in a B-17. (70′) ECU INT of bombardier’s head bent over the bombsight–his right hand is raised, then he presses the bomb release cable switch. (75′) ACU low angle, B-17 in flight to the left–three bombs fall singly from the aircraft. (78′) AMS low angle, approximately twelve B-l7s in formation flight toward camera.’
Public domain film from the US National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engine heavy bomber developed in the 1930s for the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). Competing against Douglas and Martin for a contract to build 200 bombers, the Boeing entry outperformed both competitors and exceeded the air corps’ performance specifications. Although Boeing lost the contract because the prototype crashed, the air corps ordered 13 more B-17s for further evaluation. From its introduction in 1938, the B-17 Flying Fortress evolved through numerous design advances.
The B-17 was primarily employed by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) in the daylight strategic bombing campaign of World War II against German industrial and military targets. The United States Eighth Air Force, based at many airfields in central and southern England, and the Fifteenth Air Force, based in Italy, complemented the RAF Bomber Command’s nighttime area bombing in the Combined Bomber Offensive to help secure air superiority over the cities, factories and battlefields of Western Europe in preparation for the invasion of France in 1944. 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 prewar inception, the USAAC (by June 1941, the USAAF) promoted the aircraft as a strategic weapon; it was a relatively fast, high-flying, long-range bomber with heavy defensive armament at the expense of bombload. It developed a reputation for toughness based upon stories and photos of badly damaged B-17s safely returning to base. The B-17 developed a reputation as an effective bomber, dropping more bombs than any other U.S. aircraft in World War II. Of the 1.5 million tonnes of bombs dropped on Germany and its occupied territories by U.S. aircraft, 640,000 tonnes were dropped from B-17s. In addition to its role as a bomber, the B-17 was also employed as a transport, antisubmarine aircraft, drone controller, and search-and-rescue aircraft.
As of May 2015, ten aircraft remain airworthy. None of them are combat veterans. Dozens more are in storage or on static display. The oldest of these is a D-series veteran of combat in the Pacific and the Caribbean…
