Talk:Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 00:17, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Flag of the Soviet Union (1936–1955).svg

Contradiction in Introduction
The last paragraph of the intro reads (emphasis added):

"As of November 2022, four aircraft remain airworthy, none flown in combat. Dozens more are in storage or on static display. The oldest of these is The Swoose, a B-17D which was flown in combat in the Pacific on the first day of the United States' involvement in World War II."

Which is it? Were none of the four remaining airworthy aircraft flown in combat, or was the oldest of them flown in combat? Eclectic7713 (talk) 13:36, 27 October 2023 (UTC)


 * It seemed to me that a comma should have been used instead of a period/full stop, hopefully it is clearer now. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by)  14:40, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Tonnage
The lede makes the claim that the B-17 'dropped more bombs than any other aircraft in World War II', which is unevidenced, reads as a bit schoolboyish, and probably isn't correct. Perhaps it should say 'any other US aircraft', which, if true, would still be remarkable, given the higher production numbers of the B-24 and that bomber's widespread use in both major theatres, whereas B-17s saw relatively little service outside Europe. Further down we find a claim, sourced to a US publication, that B-17s dropped over 640,000 tons in the European theatre (and they didn't drop much anywhere else). Presumably this means US short tons -- it would be odd if it did not. And, further down still, we find the correct claim that British Lancasters dropped 681,645 short tons in the European theatre. (The original source for this claim is authoritative, being a letter of 18 October 1945 from Group Captain S.P.A. Patmore, OBE, at RAF Bomber Command Headquarters, High Wycombe, to A.V. Roe & Co., designers and manufacturers of the Lancaster, though the article cites the RAF website.) The B-17 averaged a two-ton bombload, so it would require more than 20,000 successful B-17 sorties in other theatres to make up the shortfall, which is, to put it mildly, unlikely. It would be interesting to know the total tonnage dropped by B-24s (they usually carried a similar load to B-17s), but at present it appears that the Lancaster dropped the highest tonnage of any bomber during the Second World War, by a significant margin. B-52s dropped about 2.2 million tons over seven years in the Vietnam War, but Lancasters managed almost a third of that total in about a third of the time, mostly in 1943-5. Khamba Tendal (talk) 18:44, 18 November 2023 (UTC)


 * If the statement in the lead is not supported by the body text then simply remove it. It was not there at the time of promotion to Featured Article status. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by)  18:54, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
 * The text was added here, you could ask the editor what source was used. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by)  19:11, 18 November 2023 (UTC)