Boeing YB-40 Flying Fortress March 1944. All of the aircraft were sent to reclamation, mostly at RFC Ontario in May 1945, being broken up and smelted. (A couple of the YB-40s can be seen in the 1946 movie "The Best Years of Our Lives", in the famous scene shot at the Ontario "graveyard".) No airframes were sold on the civil market. Boeing YB-40 Flying Fortress The Boeing YB-40 Flying Fortress was a modification for operational testing purposes of the B-17 Flying Fortress bomber aircraft, converted to act as a heavily armed gunship for other bombers during World War II. At the time of its
RAF Bomber Command aircrew of World War II Airmen's memoirs mention flying over target areas below which were like "Dante's Inferno", with acres of red and orange flame punctuated by percussions shock waves as bombs exploded and, while sympathy with anybody on the ground is sometimes expressed, mention is usually made of the prior German Blitz bombing of Coventry and London. Wartime reports and aircrew memoirs make regular mention of intense brightly coloured violent explosions within the bomber stream which often showered clouds of sparks which aircrew referred to as "scarecrows" and believed were a type of pyrotechnic shell designed to scare aircrew. Post-war assessment confirmed that these