Inside the B-17 Flying Fortress

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The Flying Fortress. A name that conjures up images of brave young men conducting daylight raids deep in enemy territory, far from home. The B-17 was bristling with defensive weapons and could also carry a heavy bomb load to distant locations. It rapidly became the symbol of US air power of early 1940s. We take you inside the B-17F to expose how it worked, how it was operated and the tactics that made it a formidable offensive and defensive weapon. It's reputation and achievements have made the B-17 one of the most iconic and recognizable aircraft in the history of aviation.

00:00 Intro
00:29 Airframe
04:41 The Crew
06:36 Armor
07:49 Armament
08:39 Targeting equipment
09:32 Defensive Armament. Part 1
10:42 War Thunder
11:42 Defensive Armament. Part 2
13:46 Engines
15:33 Fuel System
18:20 Hydraulic and Electrical Systems
19:00 Navigation
19:48 Starting the Engines
22:49 Conclusion

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[BluePawPrint]

Thank you War Thunder for sponsoring this video

[BMF]

I'm 77 years old now. My dad was a B-17 pilot in WW II and was shot down over Holtland, Germany on July 26, 1943. Five of the crew were killed and five survived. My dad spent the rest of the war in Stalag Luft III (the site of the Great Escape) and Stalag VII A where he was liberated in April 1945 by the advanced units of Patton's 3rd Army. He was wounded by shrapnel from a 20mm explosive shell from a German FW-190.

He very rarely said anything about his experiences in WW II. Total time was perhaps a minute or two until he died. Everything I learned about him in WW II was by my own research of US and German documents in my later life, and it took many years to piece everything together. For example it tool a long time going through the German records to learn that it was Senior Lieutenant Karl Decker piloting an FW-190 who shot my dad down after my dad's B-17 had been hit by flak and fell behind the formation on the way back from a successful bombing run on the Hanover Rubber Works, Hanover, Germany.

Oddly, one of the very few things my dad mentioned about his time in WW II was that a German patrol that was sent to take him prisoner saved him from angry farmers that wanted to kill him.

It was hard as a kid and a young adult to imagine what war was really like. My dad said that the movie "Twelve O'Clock High" came close to what it was like and the novel "Maybe I'm Dead" was a realistic depiction of what POW life was like.

Well, I got my chance to imagine what war was like. In 1967 I joined the Marine Corps to avoid being drafted into the Army. I graduated from OCS an was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant. Then after 6 months of officer training, I arrived in Vietnam on December 15, 1968 and took command of an infantry platoon. I came home in December 1969 and I can definitely say I know for a fact what war is like. It's extreme physical and mental stress, death, horrible wounds, chaos, destruction, and survival when it didn't seem possible. A special thanks to all of the Marines who served in my platoon including the magnificent Navy Corpsmen and all the Marines, Navy, and Air Force supporting operations that saved our butts more than a few times.

There is so much I can say about combat. First, if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, you are dead or wounded. Second, there were unimaginable tragedies and there were miracles on the battlefield. One day I had 34 Marines in my platoon (very much under strength) and when the sun set that day, only 4 of us were still alive and unwounded. That was the worst day of my life. On another day, we were in an intense firefight when were caught in the open by North Vietnamese soldiers. They had us dead to rights. I had to make a decision to try to fall back or to conduct an aggressive frontal attack. I only had a few seconds and I decided on an aggressive frontal attack. But I had no radio contact with my squad leaders and so I had to run up and down the line of assault shouting commands to coordinate the assault.

If you've never been in a firefight, bullets travel faster than the speed of sound and so when they pass close by, you can hear a loud "snap" which is a small sonic boom. It's not an exaggeration that during that assault it soundly like a string of firecrackers going off around me. When my platoon reached the tree line, it was hand to hand for a very brief time with some of my Marines. It didn't last more than 30-60 seconds before the enemy quickly withdrew.

After the battle, I asked my platoon sergeant to get a count of our dead and wounded. A few minutes later he returned and said, "Sir, you ain't gonna believe this, but we only have one Marine with minor wound to his hand from an enemy bayonet and he doesn't want to be evacuated." That was a miracle.

And here is the really odd thing. I really can't describe this in a way you might understand, but I had this feeling while I was in Vietnam that there was something watching over me. I never had any fear in Vietnam except for two situations. It would take too long to describe them, but one was during a night ambush we established when I thought the enemy would discover us and they had way more soldiers than I did Marines. The other was when we were in a company defensive position in a valley at night and we were hit with our own 155 mm artillery after a Recon unit in the mountains above us mistook us for the enemy. If you have never been caught in barrage of artillery, it is the most terrifying experience you can comprehend. The shrapnel is mowing down saplings and small trees. There is the screams of the wounded but no one can get to them. Those were two moments where I didn't have the feeling anyone was watching over me.

So what's my point? Well when I in my 60's I had a chance to pay for a ride on a B-17. I wanted to know kind of what my dad may have felt and saw. Obviously, there was no flak or German fighters, but I did have my experience of three years in combat.

My first impression was just how small or really tiny the B-17 was and just how difficult it was to try to get from the rear to the front of it. And how hard it was to actually try to bail out when you may have only a few seconds or minutes while the plane began to spiral out of control causing centrifugal spin trapping the crew inside. Perhaps the worst position was the ball turret gunner who could not have a parachute. In order to exit the ball turret position, the turret had to be repositioned in order for the gunner to get out, and then he had to find a parachute to attach and then find a way to bail out. If the electrical systems were shot up, there was no way he could get out of the turret and bail out.

I took two flights in the B-17 called the 909 in different years.

Tragically, a year or two ago the 909 crashed during an emergency landing and was destroyed killing passengers and crew but with a couple of survivors. I'm glad I had the two experiences before maintenance problems caused a crash and deaths. RIP for the souls who perished.

This video brought back so many memories of my dad and B-17's.

I served 21 yeas in the Marines with two more years in combat. I shouldn't be alive today.

[nittrz]

This must've taken months of research & animation.

[Frogma]

9:02 the bombardier reacting to the blast of flak and then rapidly blinking to lock in is CRAZY level of detail into your animation

[luvtruckin]

David I have no idea what it takes to make these but I’ve been a WW2 history buff for a long long time and these videos are truly one of a kind thank you so much for the effort to bring this side of the war to light.

[MrLemonbaby]

It must take a staggering amount of effort to create one of these vids. Thank you it is greatly appreciated by many.

[ConChairman]

My father was one of those friendly fire casualties that you described in your video. His crew mates knew that he wouldn't survive the flight back to England so they tossed him overboard, pulling his parachute ripcord. The Germans took him to a hospital in Paris then after recovering from his injuries, spent the rest of the war in Stalag Luft 1.

[bollocks-]

Just realized that this is yarnhub’s other channel😭

[TheMujo]

Crew be like: you get a machinegun, you get a machinegun, everybody gets a machinegun

Seeing this after having finished the Masters of Air is just awesome.

[FrzeBurn]

0:58 why not just give it in millimetres?

[alanmurdock]

About 25 years ago, I had to clean out the house of an unassuming old man with dementia/Alzheimer's. After the war he was a hardware store owner until he retired and sold it. Anyway, there were multiple Army Air core manuals on gunnery for the 17 that he had in his basement, since he was a gunnery instructor after the war. I still have his crew jacket that he wore. I would donate it to a museum, but the unit no longer exists. I know the group, squadron, and tail number. His name is Paul A. Perkins . He owned the hardware store in Bonner Springs, Kansas. I even have pictures of the crew in front of the plane. I have 21 years service in the USMC and ARMY, he had a lot more balls than me.

[danpatterson]

Engine model shows a seven-cylinder pattern instead of the actual nine. Voiceover refers to guns both as "fifty cal" and "point five zero"- these are the same thing, viewers might be confused. Kudos for pointing out that waist gunner positions were staggered on the next model (G). Mentioning that head-on attacks were preferred by the Luftwaffe could lead into mentioning the addition of a chin turret on the next model as well.

[charlesstribula]

A Luftwaffe ace once told me attacking a B-17 combat box was like standing in a bathtub & looking up at the shower-head, while trying to avoid getting wet.

[lennartwilde]

I love these kind of videos. You learn so much about these WW2 machines you didn't know about yet in such a nicely animated way. Keep it up.

[DavidCooney-pzru]

There were four (4) Officers on a B17. The Pilot, Co-Pilot, Navigator and the Bombiader. Probably a slip in research but something that should be noted.

[wahoo]

I flew in a B-17 about 10 years ago. The Yankee Lady. I sat with the flight engineer for takeoff. It was an amazing experience.

[michaelschulz]

Das ist ein hervorragendes Video zu diesem Thema. Ich möchte dafür an den Autor einen besonderen Dank aussprechen. Dieses hervorragende Flugzeug wird nicht umsonst“Fliegende Festung“ genannt und die deutschen Jagdpiloten hatten großen Respekt vor dem Flugzeug und der Tapferkeit der Besatzungen.
Die Bauweise des Bombers war konstruktiv ein gelungener Wurf zumal insbesondere an das überleben und Sicherheit der Besatzung gedacht wurde. Das drückt die Philosophie der US-Strategen aus das Leben ihrer Truppen möglichst zu schützen was in allen Truppenteilen zu finden ist.
Danke für dieses sachliche Video.

[GearHeadedHamster]

Awesome video! The animations are top notch. I love how you transition between a clean aircraft in the void, explaining it's inner workings. And a dramatic reenactment of the crew flying on a mission. Seriously, the mission segments alone could be it's own short film. Amazing job.

[JamesCraigWhoop]

Grandfather is Donald Bevan. He was a waist gunner. Flew 17 missions, shot down on April 17 1943 and survived to be POW Stalag 17. He wrote a play that became a film with William Holden, Stalag 17