Jim,
There's alotta books out there on the Fort. The two Squadron B-17 'In Actions' are decent general references and their B-17 'Walkaround' is quite nice, especially for detail shots. The B-17 'In Color' book is a small but very good general reference.
Another Squadron book is
Flying Fortress - The Boeing B-17 by Ernie McDowell. This book centers on the operational aspect of the Fort as opposed to the differences in variants like the 'In Actions' and 'Walkaround'.
Osprey has several titles in their 'Osprey Combat Aircraft' series and these are excellent as general modeling references but moreso for historical info.
That FAOW (Famous Airplanes of the World) mentioned above is another decent book, not a whole lotta detail shots though. And it is, indeed, all in Japanese but the pictures are in English.
![Tongue [:P]](/FSM/CS/emoticons/icon_smile_tongue.gif)
Sometimes hard to find these days...
Motorbooks had an excellent book out sometime back called
B-17 Flying Fortress - Combat and Development of the Flying Fortress. Dunno if it's still in print.
One that's definately long gone is
B-17 Fortress at War by Roger Freeman and published by Scribners; great book on the Fort.
An interesting book is
B-17 Nose Art Name Directory by Wallace Forman published by Phalanx. This is more of a research tool than a reference book for modelers, as there's little in the way of photographs. As a research tool it's been quite invaluable to me.
There's many others, too many to list individually.
As far as researching on the net, you have to dedicate alotta time for the purpose. There's alotta stuff out there, you just have to find it. A good place to start would be any of the search engines; I usually go with Google, but any others will do you just fine. And, with few exceptions, you're going to find the same stuff on most of the SE's anyway.
If I were to research Forts on the net I'd start by doing an image search on Google, beginning simply with 'B-17'. Then I'd move on to other search terms like:
'Flying Fortress'
'Flying Fort'
'B-17 Fort'
...and other similar combinations. You never know what a slightly different term will bring up. You usually get a buncha unrelated stuff too, but that's because of how SE's work which is another story...
Anyhoo, if you settle on a specific unit or a specific ship then you'd want to do searches on the name of the aircraft and/or the unit. Often times you'll get no good hits by searching with the name of an aircraft, but all routes should be taken.
For instance, say I was going to search for a B-17 called 'Hey Moitle', serial# 42-31080 of the 331st BS, 94th BG.
I'd start by doing an image search for 'Hey Moitle'. More than likely I'm gonna get nada for that. (Prepare to be disappointed on the majority of the searches you may initiate.
![Disapprove [V]](/FSM/CS/emoticons/icon_smile_disapprove.gif)
)
Then I'd move on to the serial #, the squadron and the group. Searching with associated information as your search term(s) is often times your best bet. If you do a search for '94th BG' or '94th Bombardment Group' (or other variations) it may lead you to a page dealing with the 94th BG and it may contain information on the aircraft which you wanna build. And it may not!
Follow the same patterns for a regular web search, as the search terms will apply to broader parts of any prospective websites or pages. I usually start with an image search as a matter of personal preference, but you can do things however you wish.
Just remember to take any possible route, no matter how fruitless it may initially appear to be. Many's the time I've 'wasted' an hour or two (or more) and been rewarded with a treasure trove of information and.or images; whether it was something I was looking for or not!
Anyhoo, if you need help give a hollar.
Fade to Black...