Production. B-17F heavy bombers. One of the many women who have become excellent plane technicians at the Long Beach, California, plant of Douglas Aircraft Company. Her job is to check attaching angles on wing leading edges for the B-17F heavy bombers. Better known as the "Flying Fortress," the B-17F is a later model of the B-17, which distinguished itself in action in the South Pacific, over Germany and elsewhere. It is a long range, high altitude, heavy bomber, with a crew of seven to nine men and with armament sufficient to defend itself on daylight missions

The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engine heavy bomber developed in the 1930s for the United States Army Air Corps. Although Boeing lost the contract because the prototype crashed, the air corps was so impressed with Boeing's design that it ordered 13 more B-17s for further evaluation. The B-17 was primarily employed by the United States Army Air Forces in the daylight precision strategic bombing campaign of World War II against Germany. 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 Japan.