Yup, the bf110 was a very good aeroplane, when used in the right way, and of course it developed into an absolutely deady night fighter later in the war, as well as being effective in Poland, Norway and later Russia.
Understandably, it could not turn with single-engined fighter aircraft, having been designed to be longitudinally stable in order to offer a goog gunnery platform against bombers, and it was noted for having extremely poor acceleration, which again was a handicap if a pilot attempted to dogfight with it. Nevertheless, if used as a 'boom and zoom fighter', where the speed is kept up and the aircraft is fought in the vertical plane, it's quite handy, with devastating, closely grouped forward armament that packs a real punch, as evidenced by that screenshot at the top of the thread!
The poor reputation mainly stems, of course, from the Battle of Britain, where the thing was invariably used in totally the wrong way and often got handed some rough justice as a result. However, as is often assumed, not all bf110s in the Battle of Britain performed badly, in fact, probably the most effective Luftwaffe unit of all during the Battle of Britain - Eprobungsgruppe 210 - used the bf110 with devastating effectiveness at low level to make point attacks on some critical targets, including the Supermarine works at Woolston and Manston aerodrome. Unfortunately, the Luftwaffe's poor intelligence often failed to identify the best strategic targets, and so this capability was not exploited to its fullest.
The bf110 (like the Ju-87 Stuka) was among the pride of the Luftwaffe prior to WW2, and the Nazi propaganda machine talked it up a lot. Many elite crews regarded assignment to the bf110 as one of the plum jobs, it being one of Herman Goering's favourite aircraft, he famously comparing it to Hannibal's Elephants. However, Herman Goering's love affair with the aircraft changed quite a bit when his nephew, Oberleutnant Hans Joachim Goering was shot down in one whilst escorting Ju-87s on a raid. Goering junior flew with III/ZG76 (Zerstorergruppe), who on this occasion lost four bf110s to 601, 87 and 238 Squadrons, Goering junior's aircraft crashing on Verne heights near Portland Harbour. ZG76's commander Hauptman Dickore, apparently received a lot of flak from Herman Goering about this, as he had been assuming the commandant would keep his nephew out of trouble. However, Hans Joachim Goering had been described by those who knew him as 'a boisterous young man who stupidly tried to take on the whole of the RAF in one go'.
Unfortunately, much of the blame for this disaster can be attributed to Goering's often changing and misinterpreted orders, which most commnders took to mean that he wanted to keep his fighters closely tied to the bombers, often resulting in them flying into combat with their throttles well back and their flaps down, something which would obviously be disastrous considering the bf110's poor acceleration and lack of manoeuverability.
From this one can assume that Herman Goering probably would have liked the B-17, since one of his other nephews (Werner Goering) successfully piloted one of the Flying Fortresses on just under fifty bombing missions while serving in the Eighth Air Force!
If you have a decent Battle of Britain simulator (and of course IL2's creator is just about to release exactly that in about four weeks), you can prove to yourself how effective the bf110 can be, if used in the right way, by trying a campaign with one, where it is very possible to survive the battle and rack up some good scores too. But of course we have the benefit of hindsight when we do that.
Chock