Burlap houses and chicken-wire lawns camouflaged
the rooftops of Boeing Plant 2 in Seattle so that, from the air, the
bomber manufacturing center looked like a quiet suburb.
As American men went to war, women built airplanes. Thousands of
women, symbolized by "Rosie the Riveter," took up the slack in the
workforce and helped boost production from 60 planes per month in
1942 to an astounding 362 planes per month by March 1944 - at one
point the Seattle plant rolled out 16 planes in 24 hours.
Boeing started producing the B-29 bomber in 1942, both in Wichita,
Kansas, and at the Boeing Renton plant near Seattle. The new
"Superfortress" entered combat less than two years after its first
flight. In Wichita, farmhands, housewives and shopkeepers built
B-29s on 10-hour-shifts, day and night, during what later became
know as the "Battle of Kansas."
Companies around the country coordinated their war efforts. B-17s
were built at Boeing, Douglas Aircraft Co. and Lockheed Aircraft
Corp. factories. B-29s were built at Boeing, Bell Aircraft Co. and
Glenn L. Martin Co. In addition, between 1936 and 1944, Boeing built 240 Douglas DB-7B
attack bombers for France, 750 Waco-designed cargo and troop gliders
and 8,585 Kaydet trainers, first introduced at the Stearman Aircraft
Co. in Wichita in 1933. Boeing Aircraft of Canada built 362 PBY
flying boats and amphibians designed by Consolidated Aircraft of San
Diego and 16 British-designed Blackburn Shark torpedo aircraft for
the Royal Canadian Air Force. B-17 Flying Fortress

In response for the Army's request for a large, multiengine bomber,
the B-17 (Model 299) prototype, financed entirely by Boeing, went
from design board to flight test in less than 12 months.
The B-17 was a low-wing monoplane that combined aerodynamic features
of the XB-15 giant bomber, still in the design stage, and the Model
247 transport. The B-17 was the first Boeing military aircraft with
a flight deck instead of an open cockpit and was armed with bombs
and five .30-caliber machine guns mounted in clear "blisters."
The first B-17s saw combat in 1941, when the British Royal Air Force
took delivery of several B-17s for high-altitude missions. As World
War II intensified, the bombers needed additional armament and
armor.