The B-17 “Sentimental Journey” arrives at Boeing Field in Seattle on July 28, 2025, the 90th anniversary of the first flight of the bomber’s prototype at the same field. (Gary Warner/Stars and Stripes)
SEATTLE — Ninety years to the day of the first flight of the B-17, one of the last surviving Flying Fortress bombers roared into Boeing Field where it all began.
“Sentimental Journey,” a silver-skinned B-17G painted in the colors of the World War II 457th Bomb Group that flew from England against targets in Germany during World War II, arrived for a week’s stay during Seattle’s Fleet Week, which kicks off Tuesday.
Mike Garrett, the tour coordinator for Commemorative Air Force in Mesa, Ariz., which operates Sentimental Journey, said the timing was serendipitous. Formerly known as the Confederate Air Force, the nonprofit founded in 1957 works to preserve and showcase historic military aircraft.
“We were scheduled to come here Monday and I wondered ‘when was the first flight of the prototype’,” Garrett said. “It’s July 28, 1935. The exact day 90 years later. Wow.”
The four-engine heavy bomber is one of three remaining flying B-17s out of 12,731 Flying Fortress bombers built between 1937 and 1945.
“It all started here 90 years ago,” said Michael Lombardi, a recently retired historian for the Boeing Aircraft Co., who was on hand for the arrival of Sentimental Journey.
The B-17 that first flew at the airfield made Boeing the premier bomber-builder for nearly a century. The airfield next to the main Boeing aircraft assembly factory in Seattle is where the B-29 Superfortress that would carry the atomic bombs to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II first flew. The first American jet bomber, the B-47 Stratojet, and the prototype of the B-52 bomber that still flies for the Air Force 70 years after the design’s introduction, all first flew at Boeing Field.
“You could say this is the birthplace of the American heavy bomber,” Lombardi said.
In 1934, what was then the Army Air Corps initiated a competition for a multi-engine bomber to replace the twin-engine Martin B-10 bomber, the Air Corps’ first monoplane bomber.
Boeing designed a four-engine heavy bomber — the first of its kind. The prototype was Boeing Model 299.
“When the airplane rolled out, a Seattle reporter by the name of Dick Smith was so amazed by the airplane bristling with armament that he said, ‘It’s a flying fortress,’” Lombardi said. “The Boeing PR department grabbed onto that right away.”
During a fly-off competition at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio (now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base), the Model 299 crashed. Unable to complete the competition, the Air Corps awarded the contract to Douglas for the B-18 Bolo.
“It was a major blow for Boeing,” Lombardi said. “All that work seemed for nothing.”
But the Air Corps was impressed with the plane and used a loophole to order 17 of the Flying Fortresses. In the end, less than 400 B-18 Bolos were purchased as the B-17 orders were expanded after World War II started in 1939.
The B-17 was there from the very beginning of America’s involvement in the war. A flight of 12 unarmed B-17 bombers arrived at Pearl Harbor amid the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. Despite taking fire from Japanese and American forces — who were unaware of the bombers’ planned arrival, only one crewmember was killed, according to a War Department report at the time.
Three days later, Congress voted to join the war in Europe. The first U.S. contribution was to send B-17 bombers to England to fly missions against German and Italian-occupied areas. The Americans flew daylight bombing raids while the Royal Air Force, using the Lancaster bomber, hit targets at night. B-17s dropped 640,000 tons of bombs — nearly half of the Allies’ total in the European Theater of World War II.
B-17 crews had one of the highest percentages of combat deaths during World War II, according to U.S. assessments released after the war.
At the height of the early bombing raids in 1942-1943, B-17 crews had a 71% chance of dying before they completed the minimum 25 combat missions. The casualties dropped by 1944 when long-range fighter escorts, such as the P-51 Mustang, were introduced.
The 8th Air Force, which operated most B-17s in Europe, recorded 26,000 killed in action.
Sentimental Journey
Though painted in wartime colors, Sentimental Journey, like all of the airworthy B-17s, was produced late in World War II and did not see combat.
“It’s ‘just’ 80 years old,” said Garrett, the Commemorative Air Force tour director.
The bomber flew observation missions on four atomic bomb tests at the Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands, directing two unmanned B-17s into the mushroom clouds to measure radioactive fallout.
“In the early 1950s, like so many B-17s, she was eventually taken to a field to scrap and put up for auction,” Garrett said. “Because she was in good shape — no battle damage — she was picked up.”
The plane was converted to a water-dropping firefighter aircraft — a role for many B-17s after World War II. It eventually was renovated and is now part of the Commemorative Air Force collection. The plane, along with the group’s B-25 Mitchell bomber — the type of aircraft used to bomb Tokyo in 1942 as part of the “Doolittle Raid” — makes the rounds of air shows across the country.
To keep the B-17 flying, veterans trained generations of new pilots to fly the B-17.
On Monday, Aric Aldrich, 50, an airline pilot whose regular job is flying Boeing 737 jets, was one of two pilots at the controls on the 224-mile flight across Washington state from Spokane to Seattle.
He’s been a pilot on Sentimental Journey for 10 years.
“It’s a different kind of flying,” Aldrich said. “The 737 is a modern-day masterpiece, flies so smoothly. The B-17 is like driving a dump truck in the air without power steering. It’s real heavy on the take-off roll and you have four throttles to deal with.”
Aldrich said, despite the struggles, it’s an experience he loves.
“Once you get up in the air, it’s awesome,” he said. “Those four big radial engines buzzing away, the noise, the smoke, the vibration, the smell. It really brings you into how it was for those guys back in World War II. The sense of history comes through. It’s an honor and a privilege to bring a B-17 back to Boeing Field for the 90th anniversary of the first flight.”
Lombardi, the former Boeing historian, said having a B-17 back in Seattle on Monday made history come alive.
“Having the B-17 here again at Boeing Field is a reminder of all the people who make up the story of a great airplane — the men and women who built it here, and those brave young men who flew it into combat on incredible missions,” he said. “It’s a legend and a legacy that is so inspiring for all of us today.”
