HOOTING down one of these four-engined American
Transcript of HOOTING down one of these four-engined American
S
HOOTING down one of these four-engined American
bombers is like taking a fortified position ― it is a task
for ordnance; the heavier the better!" Fieldmarschall
Schperrle, Nazi air bigwig, back-handedly paid the B-17 her
greatest compliment when he made this statement. He was,
according to the Swedish aviation publication Flygning,
arguing for heavier guns on future interceptor aircraft.
Indications are that, he will get it, but whether anything less
than a field gun will be effective against the B-17's
miraculous structure is a question.
The B-17 can take it. Event after event prove that this four-
engined production air cruiser can absorb punishment that
could split a corvette and possibly send a destroyer to the
bottom.
The Fortresses' toughness just didn't happen. It was
engineered into B-17s long before the first one was more than
a military idea. When even American air strategists thought
four-engined planes were impractical, the Fortress' structural
ancestor, a single-engined mailplane called the Boeing
Monomail, flew five passengers and 750 lbs of cargo at a
cruising speed of 140 mph on a 575 hp air cooled engine. In
an era where wooden wings and fabric covering were still
good conservative engineering, a smooth-skinned, flush-
riveted semi-monocoque airplane was an unheard-of
innovation. Conservative operators despised the craft, and
conservative legislators wanted to know what was wrong with
biplanes for flying the US Mail.
Nevertheless, the Monomail proved that it could fly faster,
farther and with greater loads. Its rigid, stressed-skin structure
could carry its load with less weight invested in structure and
with less maintenance grief than the conventional airplane.
The Boeing Monomail begat two offspring; one was
destined to be popular and famous in its own right, the other
to quietly revolutionize military aviation. The popular child
was the Boeing 247 twin-engined all metal transport. For the
pilot, here was a ship that had two engines for top
performance, and a power reserve for good flying on one
engine. To the operator, here was an airplane with a sturdy
airframe that would need little or no maintenance for its entire
lifetime.
The military offspring was another twin-engined low-wing
monoplane not quite as pretty, but more revolutionary in its
field. Its maximum speed with full military load was 186
mph, and it went by contemporary combat planes as though
the fighters were parked. This Boeing Death Angel marked
the doom of many reactionary ideas in design. It kissed
farewell to the biplane as a military entity, it doomed the fixed
landing gear, and started a world-wide design competition for
better ships, tougher structures and higher cruising speeds.
There is a lot of history between the B-9 and the B-17
including the decision that a proper defensive airplane for the
nation must be one that can reach into the middle of either
ocean and drop enough weight to sink a battleship. It must
have enough stamina to take any beating defensive aircraft
can hand out in order to reach the bomb release line. The
Fortress has this stamina ― it has proved itself more times
than has ever been recorded for public observation. Like the
predecessor, the Fortress is a semi-monocoque structure,
one in which the skin or outer shell, reinforced by a widely
separated supporting structure, carries the weight. Compare
this with the skeleton structure used a decade or so back,
and still prevalent in light airplanes. This frame, usually
made of welded steel tubing, is faired off with wooden or
metal spacers, and covered with doped fabric. In non-
combat aircraft, this is fine, but in a military plane, it is
unsatisfactory, for if a major or even a supporting member is
blown away, the entire structure will collapse.
The secret of the Fortress' structural strength is
decentralization of stress. No single part of a Fortress
carries more than a just proportion of the total load, so there
seems to be no Achilles heel. To knock a Fortress down, one
must kill three engines, fire the fuel tanks or blow off the
entire tail or entire wing. This is admitted, even by the
Luftwaffe experts.
The evidence supporting it seems to be their willingness
to surrender speed and performance to carry enough fire
power to down a Fortress. Look at the planes they send
against them. Fw-190s armed with four 20-mm cannon,
special interceptor versions of the Junkers Ju-88, with four
20-mm cannon in the nose and 13-mm machine guns in the
top and bottom turrets. Special "souped up" versions of the
Dornier 217 have attacked them with compound attack,
using 88-mm rockets and a new type 30-mm cannon.
Goebbel may mouth, and the critics of the old Boeing
may hunt for new epithets, but the enemy still pays her the
greatest compliment― heavier ordnance ― big guns to
storm a Fortress.
And the Fortress will stand the assault,
This article was originally published in the February, 1944,
issue of Air News magazine, vol 6, no 1, pp 24-25.
The original was printed on 9½ by 12¾ inch paper. The
pages were reduced to print on letter-size paper.
Photos credited to Signal Corps, USAAF.