B-17 Flying Fortress: Units of the MTO

First published in Great Britain in 2003 by Osprey Publishing,

Midland House, West Way, Botley, Oxford OX2 0PH, UK

44-02 23rd St, Suite 219, Long Island City, NY 11101, USA

All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Enquiries should be addressed to the Publishers.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Print ISBN: 978 1 84176 580 8

PDF e-book ISBN: 978 1 78200 904 7

ePub e-book ISBN: 978 1 78200 837 8

Edited by Tony Holmes

Page design by Tony Truscott

Cover Artwork by Iain Wyllie

Aircraft Profiles by Mark Styling

Colour plates commentaries by William Hess and Mark Styling

Scale Drawings by Mark Styling

Index by Alan Thatcher

Origination by PPS Grasmere Ltd., Leeds, UK

Typeset in Adobe Garamond, Rockwell and Univers

Acknowledgements

Profile artist Mark Styling would like to thank John Carlson, Carlos and Louis Gonzales, Swoosie Kurtz, James S Peters Sr, Dennis Pixler, Richard K Radtke, Boyd Thompson and John and Donald Wise who helped provide information crucial for the rendering of the artwork that appears in this volume.

Editors note

To make this best-selling series as authoritative as possible, the editor would be extremely interested in hearing from any individual who may have relevant photographs, documentation or first-hand experiences relating to the elite pilots, and their aircraft, of the various theatres of war. Any material used will be fully credited to its original source. Please contact Tony Holmes at 16 Sandilands, Chipstead, Sevenoaks, Kent, TN13 2SP or via email at tony.holmes@zen.co.uk

Front cover

Built by Boeing at its Seattle plant in December 1943, B-17G 42-31884 was purchased for the US Army Air Force by American Legion Post 142 in Maywood City, New Jersey. It was therefore only fitting that when the bomber arrived at Amendola airfield, in Italy, following its combat assignment to the 340th Bomb Squadron (BS) of the 97th Bomb Group (BG) on 26 January 1944, it should be christened MISS MAYWOOD.

Over the coming months this aircraft would fly many missions to targets such as Vienna, Ploesti, Regensburg, Steyr and Blechhammer, where it was exposed to fighter attack and intense flak. By September 1944, when the author completed three missions in it, MISS MAYWOOD was beginning to show signs of fatigue – sheet metal patches covered numerous small flak holes and its Olive Drab camouflage was badly chipped and stained, not to mention an interior that reflected the bomber’s status as an old warrior.

On 18 November 1944 MISS MAYWOOD was named as a spare for a mission to Vienna, and when a much newer B-17 was scrubbed at the last minute due to a technical fault, the old warhorse stepped into the breach once again. As this specially commissioned artwork graphically reveals, 42-31884 bravely endured a blanket of flak in the skies above Vienna, which was second only to Berlin in respect to the number of gun batteries that defended it. MISS MAYWOOD’s luck held, and the bomber successfully completed the 97th BG’s 10,000th sortie against the enemy. On 9 December 1944 42-31884 chalked up its 100th mission on a trip to Regensburg, which was another heavily defended target. Shortly after this sortie the veteran bomber was ‘put out to pasture’ as one of the outstanding Fortresses of the veteran 97th BG, MISS MAYWOOD eventually being salvaged on 30 November 1945. (Cover artwork by Iain Wyllie)

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