On October 30, 1935, at Wright Air Field in Dayton , Ohio , the U.S. Army Air Corps held a flight competition for airplane manufacturers vying to build its next-generation long-range bomber. It wasn't supposed to be much of a competition. In early evaluations, the Boeing Corporation' s gleaming aluminum-alloy Model 299 had trounced the designs of Martin and Douglas. Boeing's plane could carry five times as many bombs as the Army had requested; it could fly faster than previous bombers, and almost twice as far.

A Seattle newspaperman who had glimpsed the plane called it the "flying fortress," and the name stuck. The flight "competition, " according to the military historian Phillip Meilinger, was regarded as a mere formality. The Army planned to order at least sixty-five of the aircraft.

A small crowd of Army brass and manufacturing executives watched as the Model 299 test plane taxied onto the runway. It was sleek and impressive, with a hundred-and- three-foot wingspan and four engines jutting out from the wings, rather than the usual two. The plane roared down the tarmac, lifted off smoothly and climbed sharply to three hundred feet. Then it stalled, turned on one wing and crashed in a fiery explosion. Two of the five crew members died, including the pilot, Major Ployer P. Hill (thus Hill AFB , Ogden , UT ).

An investigation revealed that nothing mechanical had gone wrong. The crash had been due to "pilot error," the report said. Substantially more complex than previous aircraft, the new plane required the pilot to attend to the four engines, a retractable landing gear, new wing flaps, electric trim tabs that needed adjustment to maintain control at different airspeeds, and constant-speed propellers whose pitch had to be regulated with hydraulic controls, among other features.

While doing all this, Hill had forgotten to release a new locking mechanism on the elevator and rudder controls. The Boeing model was deemed, as a newspaper put it, "too much airplane for one man to fly. The Army Air Corps declared Douglas 's smaller design the winner. Boeing nearly went bankrupt.

Still, the Army purchased a few aircraft from Boeing as test planes, and some insiders remained convinced that the aircraft was flyable. So a group of test pilots got together and considered what to do.

They could have required Model 299 pilots to undergo more training. But it was hard to imagine having more experience and expertise than Major Hill, who had been the U.S. Army Air Corps Chief of Flight Testing.

Instead, they came up with an ingeniously simple approach: they created a pilot's checklist, with step-by-step checks for takeoff, flight, landing, and taxiing. Its mere existence indicated how far aeronautics had advanced.

In the early years of flight, getting an aircraft into the air might have been nerve-racking, but it was hardly complex. Using a checklist for takeoff would no more have occurred to a pilot than to a driver backing a car out of the garage. But this new plane was too complicated to be left to the memory of any pilot, however expert.

With the checklist in hand, the pilots went on to fly the Model 299 a total of 18 million miles without one accident. The Army ultimately ordered almost thirteen thousand of the aircraft, which it dubbed the B-17. And, because flying the behemoth was now possible, the Army gained a decisive air advantage in the Second World War which enabled its devastating bombing campaign across Nazi Germany.

 

That's a cool story that I've never heard. At least now I know why I had to memorize those damn things.

 

That was a cool story, thanks for posting it up.

 

American military prowess almost single-handedly destroyed by the media and hand-wringers.

The more things change...

A little tribute to that amazing plane.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKBNw4kfwNM

 

I honestly don't konw if we'll ever see a Generation like that, ever again. (Simba's post). Thinking about what they experienced, having to rely purely on the equipment (hoping it doesn't fail) and the fact that most of them probably didn't discuss what they were feeling -due largely b/c that's not what you do back then- keeping all of those emotions bottled up, is humbling.

Having Served I can say that I know nothing of what they went through. The BALLS those guys had, on the Ground, or in the Air; is unmeasurable.

OOHRAH and God Speed to every single one of them who Served the United States of America, and the Allied Nations in WWI and WWII.

 

Helluva story!

What a generation. We may only be able to dream that we get a return to such a time.

 

I actually just heard this story on The Daily Show. Stewart had an author, Atul Gawande on about his book "The Checklist Manifesto".

He explained the story to the tee and how doctors are starting to implement checklists into operations. I want to say something like 20% of the doctors they've approached have accepted it, most believe they are "doctors" and that they went to school not to have checklists.

But of the 80% that haven't accepted it, when asked if they were the patient would they want the doctors to have a checklist 93% said yes. Wonder what the 7% were thinking about....