What's this, no flower fotos? That's right, time to return to the grand and glorious genre of aircraft. Captured on film back in April 2001, on visitor's day at the March AFB Museum in Riverside, CA., the same day and place I took pics of the famed P-38 interceptor, B-29 bomber, SR-71 Blackbird, MiG-19 fighter, and D3A Val dive bomber, which are on display in my gallery. The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engine heavy bomber aircraft developed 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 the other competitors and more than met the Air Corps' expectations. Although Boeing lost the contract due to the prototype's crash, the Air Corps was so impressed with Boeing's design that they ordered 13 B-17s. The B-17 Flying Fortress went on to enter full-scale production and was considered the first truly mass-produced large aircraft, eventually evolving through numerous design advancements. The B-17 was primarily employed by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) in the daylight precision strategic bombing campaign of World War II against German industrial, civilian, and military targets. The United States Eighth Air Force based in England and the Fifteenth Air Force based in Italy complemented the RAF Bomber Command's nighttime area bombing in Operation Pointblank, to help secure air superiority over the cities, factories and battlefields of Western Europe in preparation for Operation Overlord. The B-17 also participated, to a lesser extent, in the War in the Pacific, where it conducted raids against Japanese shipping. Source: Wikipedia encyclopedia A fellow employee of mine had been a tail gunner on a B-17 during WWII. Debbielove should like this since he has a B-17 as his avatar. Incidentally, I crawled and crept through the entire innards of the ship and found it most confining. Thankx for clicking on, and have a fortuitous Friday.