With Germany's Hitler being assassinated, the Germans were now, without a madman at the tiller, pulling a last minute Hail Mary and "kind of" turning the tide of war back to it's favor, at least in Europe. Techno weapons were being advanced and countered from both sides in a mad rush to beat the enemy to the finish line.
With Germany's Luftwaffe taking delivery of jet and rocket powered interceptors, albeit with very short TBO on the engines, short legs and lightly armed weapons due to weight restrictions.
The Allied air forces needed to up it's game, using captured technology and better metallurgy to produce their own turbine powered propeller driven aircraft, the decision was made to, in a limited fashion, upgrade the B-17.
New high power engines were fitted with the massive weight loss realized from losing the heavy radials the newly re-engined bombers were lighter, faster, had longer legs than their fighter escorts (in many cases running at reduced power to enable the escorts to keep up) Once over the target they were untouchable by any piston powered fighter. To the point of being actually able to outrun 109's and 190's in climb, dive and level flight. However a turning battle was out of the question.
Upon discovery that the bombers were able to overtake enemy fighters, almost all defensive armament was dropped save the tail stinger (which was up gunned with 2X30mm and 2X70mm canon and one 50cal. for tracer sighting. The nose armament was also up gunned with 2X60 mm high cyclic rate rotary canons. The crew was also reduced to 4 members.
Strategic camouflage was experimented with, the type shown here is one of those. The aircraft is lightly weathered due to being put into service very recently (and because I forgot to do any) The crew also added nose art in the form of a tribute to an earlier crew (Ye Olde Pub-2)
This one is displayed as just having taxied in with 2 engines in feather...to save fuel and reduce speed