If you were to look up, was there ever any instance that you would see THAT many in the sky? It blows my mind how many there are, but probably cause IRL I see max 2-4 plane trails in the sky at a time on a good day.
E: fixed link
US heavy bombers would fly in combat boxes which varied from 12 to 40 aircraft (27 per box was common near the end of the war); these were compact formations, and each 4-engined bomber would leave 4 contrails (condensation trails), if conditions were such that contrails formed. The image you link to shows contrails that could possibly be left (mostly) by a single combat box. A large raid would have hundreds of bombers (plus escorts), formed up in multiple combat boxes.
A good way to judge the realism is to compare with WW2 photos:
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-f2a7d85cc14d5c8450d984a19fee0d35-c
https://johnknifton.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/2-photos-contrails.jpg (from https://johnknifton.com/tag/b-17s/ which has other photos which might be of interest)
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-866d400aa9e0f2f1c906be40a214b7cd.webp
Photographed from the bombers themselves: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bomber_stream.jpg
Bombers without contrails: https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-56aed6cd99608a8eeef7b4c211333f9d
Basically, yes, you could look up at times and see that many contrails.
To follow up, one of the most striking elements of that scene was the huge number of bombers, and the small number of (apparent) German planes rising to meet them. Would that ratio be an accurate portrayal of German air power by that time in the war?
