Once upon a time, great fleets of aircraft crossed the skies, intent on destroying an enemy far below. Other swarms of aircraft rose to battle the intruders in ferocious duels that swirled for hundreds of miles.

It was only 70 years ago that bomb-laden Flying Fortresses droned over Germany, but it seems more like 700. Today’s aircraft are faster, their bombs more lethal, but this is mere technology. What seems so different is the concept of Industrial Age aerial warfare: Not lone aircraft dropping a single smart bomb, but masses of aircraft engaged year after year in a relentless battle of attrition. Who can imagine a time when a thousand-plane raid was a typical day’s work?

“Gary Grigsby’s Eagle Day to Bombing the Reich,” from Matrix Games, is a simulation of the strategic war over Europe from August 1943 to May 1945 (the game also includes a shorter Battle of Britain campaign). Almost all air combat games are flight simulators, but “Eagle Day to Bombing the Reich” is not — repeat not — a dogfight and joystick game. It is an operational/strategic sim for one or two players.

The campaign game is 700 daily turns, though with the notoriously bad European winter weather, many days will see the rival air forces grounded. Each turn consists of the Allied player plotting his raids, including bombing missions (day and night), fighter sweeps and recon. As with other games from designer Grigsby, there is a lot of detail. First comes selecting from a wide array of targets, including numerous types of factories, as well as cities, ground troops, airfields and radar stations.

Then comes selecting eligible aircraft groups and squadrons. (British 2nd Tactical Air Force fighters won’t escort U.S. 8th Air Force bombers, for example.) A flight path must be chosen. Up to four ingress and egress segments can be selected for each mission, enabling Allied strikes to fly zigzag and diversionary routes to play mind games with the Germans. Players can also select mission altitude; flying lower improves bombing accuracy, but you risk being chewed up by the numerous German flak batteries and barrage balloons. Fighters can be assigned to close or high bomber escort.

Once the Allies finish their raid planning, the game switches to the execution phase, a pausable real-time system where the Luftwaffe does the work while the Allies watch. The map sprouts measles as raids appear on the edge of radar range, or whatever is left of the radar net after the Typhoon fighter-bombers pulverize it. Each raid displays the number of aircraft as well as their course and speed. Since the Germans can never be sure how many raids there will be, they must carefully commit their interceptors, lest another raid 30 minutes later catch the defenders refueling on the ground (especially nasty when Allied fighters strafe the airfields). As day progresses into night, the RAF pounds German cities while Luftwaffe night fighters prowl the nocturnal bomber stream, looking for Lancasters and avoiding Mosquito intruders.

The Allies win by accumulating points for destroying German aircraft and factories, and by terror bombing cities (not a politically correct concept, but such was history). The Luftwaffe doesn’t have a hope in hell of stopping the Combined Bomber Offensive, but it can exact a stiff enough price to keep the Allies from winning and buy time to develop wonder weapons.

There is a lot under the hood of this game. Hundreds of aircraft are in the database, each with a plethora of ratings for speed, range, maneuverability, durability and armament. Allied players will gnash their teeth at the short range of their fighters, at least until the Mustangs arrive in early 1944. The Germans are caught on the horns of a four-engined dilemma: Heavily armed and armored interceptors are needed to shoot down the Flying Fortresses, but those clumsy assault fighters are dead meat for nimble Allied escorts.

Which brings up the German production subgame. The Germans can choose to build a wide variety of aircraft, including single- and twin-engined fighters. Each model requires specific parts and engines, and the German player will spend a lot of time fiddling with production (lots of fun building Me-262 jet fighters when the 8th Air Force just flattened the Junkers’ engine factory). The Germans can also allocate factories for research in hopes of speeding up production of wonder fighters like the Go-229 flying wing.

“Eagle Day to Bombing the Reich” could have been a classic game. Unfortunately, the Matrix version is pretty much a reissue of the original 1999 TalonSoft game, which was lambasted at the time for its poor graphics and lousy user interface that often resembles a spreadsheet. Fine wines improve with age, but not computer war games. Players will fight the interface as much as they fight their opponents.

Yet I’ve been playing this game by e-mail for months. Not because of the primitive graphics or finicky interface. I play because there is nothing else like it. “Eagle Day to Bombing the Reich” is air warfare at the cerebral level. The thrill of victory isn’t gunning down a Luftwaffe fighter in a dogfight. It’s pulverizing that Ruhr tank factory and bringing your Flying Fortresses home to fight another day. It’s a lesson in the futility of war. The Allies bomb, the Germans repair, the Allies bomb again. Rinse and repeat.