T H E A R M Y A I R F O R C E S I N W O R L D W A R I 1
data.lss Military characteristics for the new 5,000-mile-range bomber,
approved by the General Staff on 16 May 1934, were adjusted to a
tactical mission for “the destruction by bombs of distant land or naval
targets” and a purpose “to reinforce Hawaii, Panama, and Alaska
without the use of intermediate servicing facilities.” June 1934 saw
completion of the preliminary contracts with the Boeing Aircraft
Company, and a year later a contract was closed for the purchase of
one XB-IS, as the projected plane had now come to be designated.lso
The plane itself was not completed until the fall of 1937, and subse-
quent tests proved that its size and weight had been conceived on a
scale too ambitious for the power plants then available. But Project A
became the parent, too, of the B-17, the B-24, and the B-29, to mention
only those heavies which carried the weight of the bombing attack on
Germany and Japan in World War 11,
The B-17 grew out of proposals distributed in 1933 among manu-
facturers for a design competition in the following year. These
proposals specified a multi-engine bomber, and all save one of the
competitors apparently assumed that the Air Corps sought only a
superior twin-engine plane. Boeing, however, undertook to develop
a four-engine bomber of revolutionary design. In July 193 5 the XB- I 7
underwent successfully its first test flight. The following month it
flew nonstop a t an average speed of 2 3 2 miles per hour from the Boe-
ing plant in Seattle to Dayton-a distance of 2,100 miles. Unfor-
tunately, the original model crashed and burned on 3 0 October 1935,
after completion of all detailed engineering inspection and study of
performance data, but before a formal evaluation board had met.lsl
Pending the final action of an evaluation board, the Air Corps had
already recommended the purchase of 65 B-17’~in place of 185 other
aircraft previously authorized for the fiscal year 1936. But destruction
of the original model, though investigation cleared the plane of
mechanical fault, was followed by a reduction by the War Depart-
ment of the figure from 65 to I 3 . In fulfilment of a contract closed on
17 January 1936, the first of the 1 3 B-17’s was delivered in January
1937, and by August of that year the full number had been deliv-
ered.lsz
The reader perhaps will have noticed the coincidence of key dates
in the origin of the heavy bomber program with other major develop-
ments affecting the role of the Air Corps in national defense. The
report of the Drum Board, with its recommendation of a GHQ air
66