Waitaminute
I dunno if i understand you right on this one.
What I found was that if you augerd your lead bomber fast enough to save the other 2, they showed dammaged from the lead bomber hitting the ground.
Like engines not turning but reading full manifold presure, full rpms. Was weird when I first saw this. I thought the B17 just glided really far or something but realized that the engines were still running on the instrument pannel.