AMERICA’S FIRST JET BOMBER
240 pages
Boeing B-47 Stratojet
By: C Mike Habermehl, Robert S Hopkins III
ISBN: 978-1-91080-908-2
Price: £27.95 Format: 280 x 215mm
Web: www.crecy.co.uk
With more than 2,000 B-47s built, it’s hard to believe this Cold War bomber started as a propellerdriven straight-wing design, and was viewed as an ‘interim’ design. Yet, as described in this exhaustively researched narrative, the Stratojet influenced subsequent US heavy bomber designs (notably the B-52), and served in roles that weren’t considered at the time of the XB-47’s first flight in 1947. While there have been other histories of the type, this volume benefits from recently declassified USAF documents. The result is arguably the definitive account of the first all-jet bomber to serve with the USAF, and covers all aspects of its career dispassionately, highlighting successes as well as failures. While bombers may have all the glamour, they were never flown in anger; as described here, it was the later electronic and photographic reconnaissance variants that operated at risk when conducting missions over the Soviet Union and China, and several were shot down. All variants are described in depth, and there is a complete lis…
