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IPTC: Caption
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Boeing B-17C Fortress serial number 40-2064 (RAF AN-528) in Royal Air Force markings but without camouflage during a training flight over Puget Sound in Washington State in early 1941. In a secret operation because of America's stated neutrality, the British Purchasing Commission was offered five Boeing Model 299T/B-17C Flying Fortresses in September 1940. After United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt won re-election that November, the offer increased to twenty. The British were initially reluctant because Royal Air Force Bomber Command Chief Sir Arthur Harris, at the time an Air Commodore, had written a scathing report on the B-17C Boeing Flying Fortress after visiting the United States in 1938. The cupola in the nose was "more appropriately located in an amusement park than in a war plane." Harris also criticized the plane's bombload and performance. Regardless of Harris's opinion of the Fortress, the urgent need for aircraft led to the Commission seeking to purchase the first five Fortresses. They were assigned to 90 Squadron in February 1941. Twenty-four crews under Wing Commander J. "Mad Mac" MacDougall arrived from Britain and staged through Canada to train in the Fortress, flying from McChord Field outside Tacoma. Others trained in Kansas City, Missouri and March Field in Riverside, California. All of them visited Boeing Headquarters in Seattle. The best of the RAF applied and only physically fit, small statured men were accepted, because it was felt they would have the best chance of surviving -50 degree Fahrenheit (-45.5 Celsius) temperatures encountered at 30,000 feet (9,144 meters). Sixty percent of applicants to 90 Squadron were rejected. The veteran RAF crews appreciated the B-17's "luxury" of ash trays, carpeted floors, and thermoses, nicknaming the Fortress the "gentleman's aircraft." These B-17Cs, or Fortress Is, as the British called them, had the older Sperry bombsight instead of the advanced Norden unit and only five .30 caliber (7.62mm) Bro
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IPTC: Copyright Notice
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Caption ©2007 MFA Productions LLC
Image in the Public Domain
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