History of The B-17
Over 75 years ago, the Boeing Airplane Company designed the B-17 for a contract that called for 200 of the aircraft, and by the end of production, Boeing had built a total of 6,981 B-17s. The Douglas Aircraft Company and the Vega Aircraft Corporation (a subsidiary of the Lockheed Aircraft Company) together built another 5,745 B-17s under license from Boeing. About 50 assorted B-17 variants survive today, most being on static display at museums or on air force base air park displays. Of those numbers, only about 10 are flyable at any given time.
“Texas Raiders” was built in 1944 by the Douglas Aircraft Company at their Long Beach, California plant. Both the Boeing and the Lockheed Vega companies had already closed their production lines by this time. She was one of the last 20 B-17s built by Douglas, which makes her the youngest of the B-17s currently flying.
Built under contract number AC-1862, she was one of the last 20 B-17s built by Douglas and was delivered on July 12, 1945 to the U.S. Army Air Corps as B-17G-95-DL 44-83872. Her fuselage number was 2987, and factory number was 32513. Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) had past, and the USAAC did not have a need for more of the heavy bombers, so on July 21 of 1945, all 20 of these Douglas B-17s were transferred to the U.S. Navy to serve as PB-1W Patrol Bombers. B-17G #44-83872 was assigned the U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics Number (BuNo) 77235.
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