...and I'd forgotten what a classic title this is.
Took me a while to suss out the a3D registry tweak to get the sounds working.

Loaded her up and jumped straight into a single player mission and OMFG what fun!
Ok so the graphics are a bit dodgy inside the planes but externally with everything racked up to max. it's pretty good.
what impressed me more than anything was the sounds; I don't remember the .50 cals sounding as good as that first time around.
First time I fired from the tail turret I jumped out of the seat.
A really nice touch is the 'kerChink' of the brass falling on the plane floor.

Last time I tried this it was on a rubbish pentium computer and it was a slide slow, now it is silky smooth and fast with superb sounds.
The gameplay still looks as good as I remember though I haven't had chance to try a campaign yet.

Just a quick question to the experts, is it possible to edit the tga files to update the graphics?

I know there is an OMF editor but I couldn't get it working in Win7?

I'm pretty good with Photoshop so that aspect isn't a problem, it's getting the textures out/in that is an issue.

This now dated article might have some clues

http://www.combatsim.com/memb123/htm/2000/12/b17twkstips/

Ah- here is the one you need

http://www.combatsim.com/memb123/htm/2001/02/b17-persart/