Wings of Power Singles - B-17

By Andrew Herd (22 December 2005)

he B-17 has its origins as long ago as 1934, when Boeing set out to design a four engined monoplane bomber in response to an Army specification. The whole process took less than a year, partly because the engineers used what they had learned in the design of the Model 247 and the XB-15, which was still at the design stage. The B-17 represented a huge step forward from the biplane Keystone bombers that were then in service, but having won the competition, Boeing ended up with contracts for under 50 hulls, of which less than 40 were in service by the time war broke out in Europe in September 1939.

If the US military didn't have a need for Boeing's airplane, the Royal Air Force did, and it duly took delivery of a number of B-17Cs (Fortress 1s in RAF-speak) for high-altitude bombing. They did not fare at all well, the experiment proving the flying qualities to be wanting at altitude and the defensive armament inadequate. Boeing went back to the drawing board, lengthened the fuselage, increased the size of the fin enormously, stuck a pair of fifties in the tail and a remote controlled turret under the belly with a couple more. This was the B-17E and just over a hundred were built, before the deficiencies of the remote turret became obvious and it was replaced with a manned Sperry unit. Four hundred of those were built from September '41 onwards and they could cruise at over 200 mph carrying 4000 pounds of bombs.

The 'E' was the model that the Eighth Air Force formed with in Britain during 1942, but it wasn't until January 1943 that the US bombing offensive started in earnest. By now, some of the 3400 B-17Fs were finding their way to the front line, but even though these had eleven machine guns, they took heavy casualties on missions that lasted up to eight hours, until tactics were refined to allow heavy supporting fire from planes in close formation and long range fighter escort was provided.

The definitive model was the B-17G, which was based on an 'F' with a Bendix chin turret fitted; this took total armament up to thirteen machine guns, loaded with over 6000 rounds of ammunition. Over 8500 B-17Gs were built, powered by four supercharged Wright R-1820-97 Cyclones delivering 1200 hp each - normal bomb load was 6000 pounds, top speed was 287 mph, cruise 182 mph, range 3400 miles and service ceiling 35,600 feet, although these figures were often lower for machines that had seen a lot of use. The name 'Flying Fortress' came from a Seattle reporter who was impressed with the B-17's defensive firepower, but one of the plane's hidden virtues was that the hull could be shot to pieces and still fly, many B-17s returning on only two engines with gaping holes in the wings and fuselage. The Japanese called the B-17, 'the four engined fighter', being unprepared for the weight of firepower even a lone Fort could bring to bear on its attackers.

According to Boeing, over 12,700 B-17s were built of which fewer than a hundred airframes survive today, with only a handful in airworthy condition. At the end of the war, most were cut up for scrap, though a few met a fiery end as target drones as late as the sixties.

A typical B-17 mission began with the crews getting up at 01:00, for breakfast at 02:00 and briefing at 03:00. Then the crews dressed in their electrically heated suits, fur boots and triple layered gloves, before donning a manganese steel plate 'flak vest' - these were popular items as it was well known that a bombardier wearing one had survived a cannon shell that exploded only two feet in front of his chest. Then on went the parachute harness and leather helmet with oxygen mask. On a July morning, the crews moved as slowly as they could, because working up any kind of sweat at all would mean it freezing on your body as the plane climbed to 30,000 feet. Then it was onto the crew truck, out to dispersal, to wait for the flare that announced take off, somewhere between five and six in the morning.

The four men in the front of the bomber lived (and died) in a close group. Visible through a small hatch below the feet of the pilot and co-pilot was the cramped station of the bombardier, hemmed in by three machine guns in a B-17F. Above the pilots was the flight engineer, perched on a small saddle in the Bendix upper turret. Behind him was the bomb bay, only traversible by a narrow cat-walk, then a bulkhead, with the radio operator behind, next to a seat occupied by the ball turret gunner. Further back were the waist gunners, who got in each other's way in the 'F', so the 'G' had the right hand waist opening repositioned a few feet further forward. Behind them, another bulkhead, beyond which was the tail, in which the loneliest member of the crew, the tail gunner, sat. Together with the ball turret gunner, tail gunners faced the brunt of fighter attacks and the knowledge that in the event of the plane being so seriously damaged that it had to be abandoned, they might not be able to get out in time.

Being in an aircraft when it was attacked was absolutely scary and one aircrew member described it as like being sat in the boiler of a hot water heater and rolled down a rocky hill. The entire crew knew that a cannon shell hitting the oxygen bottles, the flares, or the bomb bay meant a fiery end. If the upper turret gunner was hit, he often fell off his saddle into the cockpit and onto the pilots, leaving one to pull him clear, while the other struggled to control the plane and prevent the fighter getting into position for another attack. At least one B-17 crew were still defending themselves from a fighter strafing them after they had ditched the aircraft in the North Sea, and the hull sank with all its guns blazing; the pilot, Arizona Harris, being awarded the DSC, although God knows, the rest of the guys deserved recognition too. What must have gone through the minds of crews when the Luftwaffe adopted the tactic of attacking bomber formations head on and surfing through them, firing cannon shells that had every chance of exploding in the face of the B-17 pilots, I don't even want to speculate. These were brave men.

All World War II bombers were relatively easy to fly, the B-17 being no exception, though it had relatively high control forces, particularly on the rudder, but turns could be made using the ailerons alone. Landings and takeoffs were easy by the standards of other bombers of the period, one feature of the Fortress that must have endeared it to pilots being that after the aircraft had been trimmed for landing with flaps down and the engines at idle, a go around could be made without any change of trim at all. As far as evasive methods went, the B-17 lacked the maneuverability of the British bombers, but at 35,000 feet, with the bombs gone, it could outpace many fighters in a climb, so the best evasive tactic for a lone bomber was to go up.

Until Wings of Power came along, FS2004 lacked a really good B-17 - in fact, it lacked any good payware simulations of World War II four engined bombers. But Shockwave Productions have fixed that, and for simmers who can't afford, or don't want to buy the full WOP package, they have released the planes as singles. To date we have the B-17 - but there is also a downloadable P-51, which doesn't feature in the full WOP package and has to be worth a look.

The B-17 is a 70 Mb download, which installs a B-17F and a G, in the liveries of 'Knockout Dropper' for the F and 'A Bit o' Lace' and 'Shoo Shoo Shoo Baby' for the G. You also get a 51 page manual in pdf format, explaining how to operate the sim and Shockwave's design philosophy, which is to produce the most realistic possible aircraft systems and flight model, which can't be bad. Did they achieve their aims? Well, read on.

The visual models of the planes are very well detailed, with crisp textures and no obvious color mismatches or bleed throughs. The most attractive of the schemes is undoubtedly 'A Bit o' Lace', the others being equally well painted, though not as eye-catching. Overall, the visual models are at the upper end of the FS addon quality scale, which is impressive, given that Shockwave are a recent entrant into the market. The flaps open to show their ribs, the engines are visible through the front of the nacelles, the interior of the nose and cockpit can be seen through the perspex - even the gear bays have had a reasonable amount of attention. The nose art is extremely well done and holds up even when the viewpoint is zoomed all the way in and I didn't experience any trouble with blurring. All the expected animations are there, including a couple of opening crew doors and working cowl flaps. Hitting 'I' gets you engine smoke on start up and some new effects are added with the sim, so that you can do realistic belly landings - which are kind of fun if you have multi-engine time and spend half the flight reminding yourself that you must not forget to lower the gear.

Moving on, the 2D panel is a neat piece of artwork that looks good even at 1600 x 1200, even though it is based on a 1024 x 768 graphic. Regular readers (though apparently very few developers) will realise that there isn't a significant performance penalty for panel graphics up to 2048 size and a considerable quality advantage to be gained. The MAAM-Sim planes are undoubtedly best of breed in the FS warbird panel arena, thanks to their use of photographic images for panel backgrounds and the quality of their instruments, but while Shockwave aren't quite in the same ballpark, they don't have too far to go.The gauges are all very sharp, as are most of the sub-panels, which include the radios, quadrant, electrical panel, co-pilot and central panels, autopilot and trimmers - the trimmers latter appearing as a strange disembodied vision squarely in the pilot's line of sight, but you get used to them after a while. The eighth sub-panel is the FS2004 GPS should you become uncertain of your position and the radios are a hybrid of the default FS Bendix-King set and a period ADF. All the sub-panels look the part, though the quadrant could do with a little work to make it look more convincing and the legends on the autopilot are a little hard to read at high resolutions, but make no mistake, this is a nice cockpit by FS standards, and as a bonus, there is a full set of 2D views.

Many of the sub-panels can be selected using the set of simicons you can see at the bottom of the panel, just left of center, the co-pilot's panel simicon being labelled 'compass', in an oversight by the developer. The trimmers and the central panel have to be called up from the menus or using hot-keys - I would far rather have had one-click access to the cowl flaps than to ATC and some hot-spots would have been a nice idea, but there really isn't much to complain about here. A partial simulation of an early C-1 autopilot is supplied as an extra and makes me glad I never had to use anything like it.

No 2D views are provided for any of the crew positions - MAAM-Sim did this for their B-25 and while I could take of leave the gunner's views, including the bombardier's eyepoint was a brainwave; once you had mastered the technique of flying the sim from this position. I took the addon up and down the Grand Canyon once or twice and would love to try doing the same with the B-17...

The virtual cockpit has fully clickable controls and is bright and sharp, so it is easy to fly the plane in this mode, though it would help if you had something like ActiveCamera to hot-key around the various gauge clusters. For some reason the default pilot's viewpoint has his nose pressed on the windshield, but that can be changed fairly easily. You don't get a virtual cabin, so it isn't possible to take a tour of the other crew positions, but the payoff is that frame rates are truly excellent.

The sound set is first rate and really sets the scene as you rumble down the pavement to begin another mission. Although the boxed WOP set includes fifty missions, you don't seem to get any with the B-17 download, but I guess the sim is fun enough without having cream on top.

Now, the flight model. Shockwave make much of the fact that they consulted with veterans and with pilots with present day B-17 time and the result is very convincing by FS standards, the sim being stiff in roll and delivering a generally stately performance that feels as if it must be right. You have to feed some in-turn rudder to keep the ball centered and stalls are a non-event, as I gather they usually were in the real thing. As usual, I didn't check every single figure in the manual against the performance of the sim, but I have no trouble believing that this is as near to how a B-17 feels to fly as we can get on a PC right now. As Shockwave are careful to point out, if you don't peg the approach speed to the correct number, it doesn't matter how much flap you deploy, you will keep on floating down the pavement, so dive bombing the circuit is out, unless you really enjoy doing go-arounds. Wheel landings aren't too difficult, three pointers being tougher, but possible, assuming you have the airspeed right and a good memory for what the FS view should look like.

I can definitely recommend this package, as it provides, without any doubt, the definitive B-17 experience in Flight Simulator. Considering that it was originally released as part of an eight plane package, the quality of the B-17 is outstanding and getting two different variants for the money is quite a plus. FS development standards have risen steeply over the past few years and we have been deluged with good software recently, but Shockwave are a welcome entrant into the market and I am looking forward to seeing more of their packages.