WWII B-17 Bomber Pilot's FLIGHT MANUAL Airplane BOOK

Here is something you won't find for sale ANYWHERE else! Exclusively from Periscope Film, a full and complete reprint of an original US Army Air Force B-17 Manual. This is NOT I repeat NOT a CD or a .pdf file! What you are getting is a wonderful 8.5x11 book made with high quality paper, and beautiful glossy covers!! Okay, more about this book:

Originally classified “Restricted”, the manual was declassified long ago and is here reprinted in book form. This affordable facsimile has been reformatted, and color images appear as black and white. Care has been taken however to preserve the integrity of the text.

170 pages, 8" x 10"

ISBN: 9781935327806

More on the B-17 from the internet:

The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was the first mass-produced, four-engine heavy bomber. It was most widely used for daylight strategic bombings of German industrial targets during World War II as part of the United States Eighth Air Force.

The prototype B-17 first flew on July 28 1935 as the Boeing Model 299, with Boeing chief test pilot Les Tower at the controls. During a demonstration later that year at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, Model 299 competed with the Douglas DB-1 and Martin Model 146. While the Boeing design was obviously superior, Army officials were daunted by the much greater expense per aircraft. The Army ordered the Douglas B-18 Bolo as it was less expensive than the Boeing Model 299. Development continued on the Boeing Model 299. October 30th of 1935 the Army Air Corps test pilot Ployer Hill took the Model 299 on a second evaluation flight. The flyers forgot to disengage the plane's "gust lock"--a device that holds the bomber's movable control surfaces in place while the plane was parked on the ground--and the aircraft took off, entered a steep climb, stalled, nosed over, and crashed. [1]. In January of 1936, the Air Corps ordered thirteen YB-17s with a number of significant changes from the Model 299, most notably that of the engines to more powerful Wright R-1820-39 Cyclones, next to 99 B-18s (successor of the DB-1).

The first B-17 went into service in 1938. By December 7 1941, few B-17s were in use by the Army. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, production was quickly accelerated. The aircraft served in every World War II combat zone. Production ended in May 1945 after 12,700 aircraft had been built.

The name "Flying Fortress" was coined by Richard Williams, a reporter for the Seattle Times who gave this name to the Model 299 when it was rolled out showing off its machine gun installations. Boeing was quick to see the value of the title and had it trademarked for use. Among the combat aircrews that flew bombers in World War II, noted aviation writer Martin Caidin reported that the B-17 was referred to as the "Queen of the Bombers."

The first use of the B-17 (the B-17C) as the Fortress I in service with the RAF was against Wilhelmshaven on 8 July 1941. By September the RAF had lost 8 to combat or accidents. They had also uncovered problems with flying it at high altitudes (about 30,000 ft).

Before the advent of long-range fighter escorts, B-17s had only their machine guns to rely on for defense for the bombing runs over Europe. To address this problem, the United States developed a staggered combat box formation where all the B-17s could safely cover any others in their formation with their machine guns, making a formation of the bombers a dangerous target to engage by enemy fighters. However, the use of this rigid formation meant that individual planes could not engage in evasive maneuvers: they had to always fly in a straight line which made them vulnerable to the German antiaircraft 88mm gun. The plane's extreme durability, and powerful defensive arcs led the Luftwaffe to develop a number of innovative (and costly) methods of combating the bomber. Late in the war, the Me-262 was to see the most (proportional) success against B-17s. However this success did not come from gun to gun combat. While the Me-262 could fly extremely fast, it had to slow down to accurately aim its guns. This endangered the fighter from the B-17's many guns. Instead, Me-262s would engage at long distances firing masses of rockets at the B-17 formations. While this tactic was successful, there were too many B-17s and too few Me-262s to make a real difference. The actual number of B-17s lost to Me-262s using this tactic was low.

The B-17 was noted for its ability to take battle damage, still reach its target and bring its crew home. It reportedly was much easier to fly than its contemporaries, and its toughness more than compensated for its shorter range and lighter bomb load when compared to the Consolidated B-24 Liberator or the British Avro Lancaster heavy bombers. Stories from veterans abound of B-17s returning to base with the tail having been destroyed, with only a single engine functioning or even with large portions of the wings having been clipped by flak.

The design went through eight major changes over the course of its production, culminating in what some consider the definitive type, the B-17G, differing from its immediate predecessor by the addition of a chin turret with two 0.50 calibre (12.7 mm) machine guns under the nose. This eliminated the aeroplane's main defensive weakness of head on attacks.

The B-17 was a versatile aircraft, and it served in dozens of units in theatres of combat throughout World War II. Its main use was in Europe, where its shorter range and smaller bombload relative to other aircraft available did not hamper it as much as in the Pacific Theatre. Only five B-17 groups operated in the Pacific, all converting to other types by 1943. Thirty-two groups were stationed in Europe, twenty-six in England and six in Italy. It was also used by the Royal Air Force, though mainly in roles other than those for which it had been designed. The first B-17s, -C and -D models — known to the RAF as "Fortress I"s — used by the Royal Air Force had been unsuccessful, and despite its overwhelming success in American hands, the British were reluctant to use the B-17 for its original mission profile of heavy bombing. They regarded the B-17 as uneconomical, due to its larger crew and relatively small bomb load. Instead, they used them for patrol bombing, and later equipped a number of them with sophisticated radio-countermeasures equipment, where they served in some of the first electronic countermeasures operations with RAF 100 Group.

During World War II, some forty B-17s were repaired by the Luftwaffe after crash-landing or being forced down and put back into the air in the service of the Reich. These were codenamed "Dornier Do 200," given German markings, and used for clandestine spy and reconnaissance missions by the Luftwaffe. When Israel achieved statehood in 1948, the Israeli Air Force had to be assembled quickly to defend the new nation from the war it found itself embroiled in almost immediately. Among the first aircraft acquired by the Israeli Air Force were three surplus American B-17s, smuggled via South America and Czechoslovakia to avoid an arms trading ban imposed by the United States. A fourth plane was captured and confiscated by American officials. In their delivery flight from Europe, the aircraft were ordered to bomb the Royal Palace of King Farouk in Cairo before continuing to Israel, in retaliation for Egyptian bombing raids on Tel-Aviv. They performed the mission (despite some of the crew fainting due to defective oxygen equipment) but caused little damage to the target. The B-17s were generally unsuitable for the needs of the Israeli Air Force and the nature of the conflict, in which long-range bombing raids on large-area targets were relatively unimportant. They were mainly used in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, flown by 69 Squadron Israeli Air Force. They were withdrawn in 1958.