Because I frequently look up military aircraft a lot on Wikipedia, and time and time again, I keep hearing how bombers are slower and less maneuverable than either fighters, attackers, or multirole aircraft. So does that mean that bombers are more heavily armored than the other three types of military aircraft? If not, and armor just weighs down *any* plane, why are bombers the largest, slowest, and leave maneuverable of the military aircraft, anyway?
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The B17 was, in my humble opinion, a poor performer. It was designed in a short amount of time for a specific job, using a certain doctrine. They would fly round-trip from England to Germany and back. At the time that they were first used, there were no fighter craft that could fly along side them for the entire trip to provide cover from enemy interceptors.
It was designed with up to 13 of the 50-caliber machine guns, and they flew in groups to provide mutual support. That also means that they had a lot of crew-members that operated the machine guns.
After D-Day in June 1944, fighter escorts could operate from bases in France, and every available fighter could assist.
However, in 1943 the P-51 Mustang was modified with additional internal and external fuel tanks to allow it to make the full round-trip. The D model had better high-altitude performance and could fly at the altitudes the bombers flew at.
If enough high-altitude long-range fighter escorts could have been provided earlier in the war, the bombers could have had fewer machine guns, and a smaller crew, and as a result it could carry more bombs.
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