Although it is sometimes introduced as the most famous of all US World War II aircraft, there are many who will argue that Boeing’s B-17 Flying Fortress ranks equally with several other superb machines which became available to the US Army at just the right moment. The North American P-51 Mustang has its ardent advocates for pride of place in the USAAF’s wartime armoury, but it was a child of war, conceived to live, fight and endure in the battle-torn skies of Europe. The origin of the Fortress was very different, its gestation long and troubled.
In the first few years after World War I the US Army Air Corps’ Brigadier General William (‘Billy’) Mitchell began his campaign in favour of strategic bombing, demonstrating (perhaps inconclusively) the ascendancy of bomber over battleship in July 1921 and September 1923 by the destruction of captured or obsolete warships anchored at sea. His…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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