B-17 service as an air tanker

I first got interested in the B-17 about a year ago when in the course of my reading, wonderings on the internet and discussions with tanker pilot friends that the B-17 was used as an air tanker for many years up until the early to mid-1980s. I understand from my good friend and aviation historian, Tom Janney, that there were upwards of 20+ B-17s in service as air tankers at various times. I then purchased a videobook called Fire Bombers in Action, by Frederick A. Johnsen last year (a great addition to my library!) who writes of historical and current airtankers, including the B-17, including a listing of tanker call signs and registrations in his Appendices. Johnsen lists 22 B-17s in his listing of tanker call signs and registrations (p.123).

I am starting this series on the B-17's service as an airtanker with three posts on three different B-17 tankers (7/27, 7/29, and 8/1).

I will conclude the series with a post or two where I will write about what I have learned about the B-17's service as a tanker through researching this series. I hope to be able to provide some more specific information from tanker pilots who flew the B-17, but that may have to wait for some time in the future. At the time of this writing, I am still working on this specific article(s).

I'd like to offer the following acknowledgements and thanks to the people, book, and websites that have made this series possible:

*Tom Janney (aviation historian),

* Philip Wallick, Photographer, see his website, aircraft military dot com.  At the time I wrote this article in August 2011, I accessed his aforementioned website which is no longer when I last checked on September 4, 2017. He did a great 1 hour video "Fire Bomber" on historic tankers (1985?) that includes awesome footage of many historic firebombers including but not limited to the F7f, A-26, B-17, TBM Avenger. As I understand it, it is only available on VHS tape, and I purchased a copy on or about June 2011 (edited on September 4, 2017).

• Fire Bombers in Action, by Frederick A. Johnsen (copyright 2010), published by Specialty Press.
• Warbird Registry, a wonderful site with information on many, many different types of warbirds including the B-17. You could spend hours on this site, I know I have, mostly on various warbirds that later saw service as air tankers.
• Collings Foundation (Owner of the B-17 now known as "Nine O Nine") I have had the privilege of chatting with a couple of their volunteers, all of whom were very helpful. 
• Arizona Wing of the Commemorative Air Force (AWCAF) (owner of the B-17 now known as "Sentimental Journey")
• "The Movie" Memphis Belle B-17, This was a great site when I accessed it in 2011, sadly the site is no longer available so I removed the link.