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From: howard@cos.com (Howard C. Berkowitz)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: What was the last use of the B-17 as a warplane?
Summary: Details
Message-ID: <5677@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 17 Apr 89 02:55:11 GMT
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From: howard@cos.com (Howard C. Berkowitz)

> >From the book "50th Anniversary, Boeing B-17, Flying Fortress, 1935 - 1985":
> 
> "While several of the world's air forces used B-17s after World War II,
> only one, the newly-formed nation of Israel, used it as a bomber.
> Puerto Rico and the Azores.  A fourth got to the Azores but was interned there.
> 
> "The three were fitted with bomb racks and hand-swung .30-caliber guns in the
> nose, waist, and tail positions -- none had their original turrets.  Loaded
> with 10 500-pound bombs, they took off from Czechoslovakia for Israel on July
> 14, 1948, and bombed Egypt en-route.  Thereafter the three, always operating
> together, went to improvised war as no U.S. B-17 ever did, even in the
> Philippines. 

   There's a detailed description of this operation in Slater's
   _The Pledge_, which is a rather wide-ranging description of the arming
   of Israel in the 1945-1948 period.

  At least one B-17 made a bomb run on an Egyptian airport by masquerading
  as a civilian airliner, requesting landing instructions, getting in
  the pattern, and then bombing the runway.







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