National Defense: AIR: Fortress Down

The Army’s Flying Fortresses (four-engined B-17 bombers) are famed among flying men for their long record of safety and reliability. The first B-17 cracked up and burned on test, but since the first Flying Fortress was delivered to the Air Corps, B-17s have flown about 8,000,000 miles, made many a long hop, without a single crash, through three and a half years. Up to last week most serious damage any of the big fellows had had was a buckled landing gear. Last week the spell was broken. Flying toward the mist-shrouded San Jacinto Mountains, 20 miles southeast of Riverside, Calif., a B-17 was heard to hiccough, splutter. Then there was an explosive crash. To death against a mountainside had ridden an Army B-17 crew, three officers, three enlisted men. Meantime the military flying services, speeding up training and tactical work, marked down their 59th fatal crash in 1940. Dead: 114.