HerbieG created this outstanding B-17G visual as the successor to his famous CFS2 MOLLY.  John BRAVO/4 Whelan of the Ground Crew painted Herbie's plane as "CHOW HOUND"

http://avhistory.org/communityserver/photos/cfs3_-_avhistory/images/604/original...

Chow Hound B-17G Tail No. 42-31367 flew out of Bassingbourn, England assigned to the 322nd Squadron of the 91st Bomb group. Lieutenant Jerry Newquist and crew flew 30 missions completing their tour of duty.

Lt. Jack Tompson and crew took over Chow Hound and on August 8th, 1944 the aircraft was shot down over France. Four out of Thompson's nine man crew were killed the rest were POW's till the war ended.

The B-17G was introduced onto the production line in July of 1943, and was destined to be produced in larger numbers than any other Fortress variant. The most readily-noticeable innovation introduced by the B-17G was the power-operated Bendix turret mounted in a chin-type installation underneath the nose. This turret was equipped with two 0.50-inch machine guns.

Another feature introduced by the G was having the waist guns being permanently enclosed behind windows instead of being mounted behind removable hatches. This made the rear fuselage somewhat less drafty.

The cheek nose guns introduced on the late B-17F were retained, but were staggered so that the left gun was in the forward side window and the right gun was in the middle side window, which reversed the positions used on the late Fs. The cheek gun mounts bulged somewhat outward into the airstream, which helped to improve the forward view from the cheek gun positions.

B-17Gs were built by all three members of the "BVD" production pool, with the Boeing lots ranging from production blocks G-1 to G-110, the Douglas blocks ranging from 5 to 95, and the Lockheed-Vega blocks ranging from 1 to 110.

The B-17G entered service with the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces in late 1943.

The so-called "Cheyenne" tail gun mounting modifications were incorporated in the B-17G-80-BO, -45-DL, -35-VE and subsequent batches. These tail gun mountings also had a reflector gunsight instead of the previous ring and bead. With this installation, these B-17Gs were five inches shorter than the earlier versions.

On later production versions, it was found necessary to stagger the waist gun positions so that the two gunners would not get in each other's way.

On the last production batches (B-17G-105 and -110-BO, B-17G-75 to -85-DL, and B-17G-85 to -110-VE), the radio compartment gun was not installed. The ammunition capacity of the waist guns was increased to 600 rpg.

When production finally terminated in 1945, a total of 4035 B-17Gs had been built by Boeing, 2395 by Douglas, and 2250 by Lockheed-Vega. The last Boeing-built B-17G was delivered on April 13, 1945.  J. Baugher