Now you know the rest of the story...

On October 30, 1935, at Wright Air Field in Dayton , Ohio , the U.S. Army Air Corps held a flight competition for airplane manufacturers vying to build its next-generation long-range bomber.  It wasn't supposed to be much of a competition.  In early evaluations, the Boeing Corporation's gleaming aluminum-alloy Model 299 had trounced the designs of Martin and Douglas.  Boeing's plane could carry five times as many bombs as the Army had requested; it could fly faster than previous bombers, and almost twice as far. A Seattle newspaperman who had glimpsed the plane called it the "flying fortress," and the name stuck.  The flight "competition," according to the military historian Phillip Meilinger, was regarded as a mere formality.  The Army planned to order at least sixty-five of the aircraft.