HK Models Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress 1:32

Price around £240.00 GBP (Aug 2013)
Review by Geoff Coughlin

Read our In depth Step-by-Step Build review of the HK Models Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress

A little bit of background

Much has been written about this most famous of WWII American heavy bomber so here’s a quick reminder about the type – as if you needed it!

The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engine heavy bomber aircraft developed in the 1930s for the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). Competing against Douglas and Martin for a contract to build 200 bombers, the Boeing entry outperformed both competitors and more than met the Air Corps’ expectations. Although Boeing lost the contract because the prototype crashed, the Air Corps was so impressed with Boeing’s design that they ordered 13 more B-17s for further evaluation. From its introduction in 1938, the B-17 Flying Fortress evolved through numerous design advances.

The B-17 was primarily employed by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) in the daylight precision strategic bombing campaign of World War II against German industrial and military targets. The United States Eighth Air Force, based at many airfields in southern England, and the Fifteenth Air Force, based in Italy, complemented the RAF Bomber Command’s nighttime area bombing in the Combined Bomber Offensive to help secure air superiority over the cities, factories and battlefields of Western Europe in preparation for the invasion of France in 1944. The B-17 also participated to a lesser extent in the War in the Pacific, early in World War II, where it conducted raids against Japanese shipping and airfields.

From its pre-war inception, the USAAC (later USAAF) touted the aircraft as a strategic weapon; it was a potent, high-flying, long-range bomber that was able to defend itself, and to return home despite extensive battle damage. It quickly took on mythic proportions and widely circulated stories and photos of B-17s surviving battle damage increased its iconic status. With a service ceiling greater than any of its Allied contemporaries, the B-17 established itself as an effective weapons system, dropping more bombs than any other U.S. aircraft in World War II. Of the 1.5 million metric tons of bombs dropped on Germany and its occupied territories by U.S. aircraft, 640,000 tons were dropped from B-17s.

Amazingly there are around 13 airworthy B-17s around the world with many more static aircraft resident in museums.

The plan

There’s a lot you could say about this new model from HKM and my approach here is to use fewer words and let the photos do most of the talking – more interesting for you and more objective as well! There are around 80 photos in this review and that’s a lot of content for you to take in, come back to and peruse at your leisure.

Read the full Here Now review with a whole host of images…
OR… Read our In depth Step-by-Step Build review of the HK Models Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress