Review by: Jonathan Houghton
Published: January 11, 2001

When the average gamer thinks about flight sims, two primary styles readily come to mind. First is cruising over mountains and oceans at blazing speeds in an F-16 while dodging missiles and releasing chaff packets. The second is a far more technical branch of simulators. These products take great pains to reproduce every last physical force on the aircraft bodies, right down to vectored thrust and the effect of directional windspeed on flight times. While the first style is geared toward action lovers, the second has far more appeal to would-be pilots and people who have actual licenses. Each of these styles also has its own representative series which defines its genre based on the crucial differences. Action has the venerable Jetfighter series while realists might prefer something along the lines of Combat Flight Sim 2 or Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000. Past realistic flight combat games have had one crucial historic element missing.

From the earliest days of flight we have games like Red Baron 3D, while modern tactical-strike games like Janes ATF give us an intriguing glimpse into the world of supersonic attack. Old style bombing is the one area that has remained virtually unexplored by the electronic entertainment industry. Until now. MicroProse and Wayward Design are exploiting this lapse in aerial history simulation by releasing a title dedicated to the most important attack bomber during World War II, the B-17.

B-17 Flying Fortress: The Mighty Eighth is far more than an attempt to fill a previously unexplored void in flight sims, however, it tries to capture the soul of an aircraft that was considered the mainstay of Allied bombing forces during the peak years of the Second World War. The history of this bomber is quite interesting, and must be told in part, for players to appreciate the level of detail injected into the final version of the game.

Before World War II formally started in 1939, companies like Lockheed and North American were vying to produce the next generation of military warplanes for the U.S. Army Air Corps. The first generation bomber to be accepted by the military was the B-17. It was capable of a 250 mph top speed with a service ceiling of 25,000 feet. When one reporter joked that this new gunship looked more like a fortress than an airplane, the name stuck and the B-17s were soon being called “Flying Fortresses.” More than one generation of these warplanes was made, and the version simulated in the game is actually the seventh standard revision on the original 1935 model. During the most important campaigns of the mid-1940′s, it was the B-17 that made crucial strikes on Nazi targets, crippling many of their bases and helping to break down the morale of Axis troops occupying both France and Germany. Many German cities fell victim to the multitudes of squadrons that flew overhead, releasing payloads of up to 8000 pounds.

Your task in B-17 Flying Fortress is to take part in the epic story of the World War II air war, signing up for duty with either the Allied or the Axis powers. As the intro movie so clearly shows, this game is not just about the crews and missions, but also about the lives of the brave escort pilots who accompanied the bombers to and from their targets. During the course of the game, you can either command the B-17 or take on the role of an escort pilot in either the P-38 Lightning, P-47 Thunderbolt or the P-51 Mustang — the last of which is considered by many historians to be the best fighter produced during the war. Players wanting to find out what going up against the Flying Fortress in a small moving target is like can choose from three German fighters, including the Me-262, which was the only jet-powered aircraft adopted for service during the war.

Taking an aircraft as complex as the B-17 on a long bombing mission is going to require some training, no matter how experienced a pilot you may happen to be. Whereas your F-16 or F-14 requires at most two crewmen to operate (one pilot and a rear intelligence officer), the B-17 bomber has ten crewmen manning different stations throughout the aircraft. To stand any chance of succeeding in the historical campaigns, you will need to learn about each position and sift through the unique control scheme created for each one. Though you can actually fly the B-17, the heart of the gameplay doesn’t rest in flying the B-17s over the target and releasing the bombs. There is an atmosphere in B-17 Flying Fortress not unlike that of a strategy game. You take command of a single bomber or an entire squadron and manage its functions either directly or indirectly. Since managing every position at once would be impossible — even if you somehow had ten monitors running in sync — Wayward Design included some incredible artificial intelligence to manage all other critical systems while you work on whatever task interests you at the moment.