[Catfish]

^ same with me, the only campaign games i played through are the Silent Hunter series, never had the patience or time with flight sims.

The two existing B17 games were great though, even the first one.. micro-managing a big plane, planning course and defending was great.
But the the sequel "The mighty eighth" was a bit screwed up – with the slightest problem engine-wise or else you could perfectly fly it manually, switch to rich or lean mixture, adjust trimming, feather a prop and try to nurse it home. But as soon as you accelerated the time (causing the sim to switch the plane to automatic during time compression) would make the whole crew bail out instantly.

So the wagon was rumbling along ok, just came back from a difficult mission which took two hours or so, you switched to auto, all your settings would be overthrown and set to standard, he engines would instantly smoke and the crew bail out!
No. fun. I really wonder why they never fixed this.

I'm not a fan of indiscriminate or carpet bombing of civilian targets as it was doctrine in the british Bomber Harrris strategy, but the planes are of course fascinating. I will never forget reading Len Deighton's "Bomber" book and "Creaking door" .. maybe they could integrate some flyable german night fighters.