B 17 Service Ceiling

Bomber raids would vary the height to throw off enemy antiaircraft gunners.

B 17 service ceiling. Ceiling 35 597 ft 10 850 m diff 7 595 feet armament. It was a semi monocoque all aluminum fuselage and the pilot and copilot sat side by side in a conventional cockpit. The service ceiling rose to 35 000 feet the range to 3 300 miles with a 4 000 pound payload.

2 x 12 7mm machine guns in nose turret. Although boeing lost the contract to the douglas b 18 bolo. The plane s service ceiling of 25 000 to 35 000 feet 7 500 to 10 500 metres depending on the bomb load put it above the worst of the german antiaircraft artillery but firepower notwithstanding formations of b 17s proved unable to fight their way unescorted to targets deep inside germany in the face of determined fighter opposition without incurring excessive losses.

The b 17 flying fortress vs. 25 000 to 30 000 feet was the norm. The boeing b 17 flying fortress is a four engined heavy bomber developed in the 1930s for the united states army air corps usaac.

Heavier than a fully armed b 17 increasing its time to climb to 20 000 feet from 25 minutes to 48 minutes. The b 17 was the first boeing military aircraft with a flight deck instead of an open cockpit and was armed with bombs and five 30 caliber machine guns mounted in clear blisters the first b 17s saw combat in 1941 when the british royal air force took delivery of several b 17s for high altitude missions. Competing against douglas and martin for a contract to build 200 bombers the boeing entry prototype model 299 xb 17 outperformed both competitors and exceeded the air corps performance specifications.

However if the mission called for it. The problem was that war department and the navy department did not recognize that mission. The service ceiling was about 35 000 feet.

Comparing the consolidated b 24 liberator four engined strategic heavy bomber aircraft against the boeing b 17 flying fortress four engined heavy bomber aircraft. The b 24 liberator veterans of air campaigns in europe and the pacific have long debated the merits of these aircraft. The b 17 was designed in the mid 1930s to accomplish the air corps mission of long range strategic bombing.