If it's the game I'm thinking of, floppy copies were going around my middle school in France at the time but this was a game that without the manual, good luck even getting the plane off the ground. I seem to recall a mode where you started out in the air. Fun times.
That reminds me of when a friend convinced me to try to get into Falcon BMS. The community has created thousands of pages of documentation on flying the Falcon, operating the various weapon systems, as well as things like energy management, formation flying techniques etc. etc.
https://wiki.falcon-bms.com/en/manuals
It's really impressive, but I did not have the time to put into learning it.
You definitely needed the manual. But an 8-year old version of me mastered the game so it couldn't have been that hard.
FWIW, the manual is a masterpiece. I really miss all the ancillaries that came with early computer games.
That happened to me, at least, with F-29 Retaliator. Your best bet was starting a mission already in the air, as the game (IIRC) didn't include any tutorials.
The mission scenario descriptions were circulating both as a text file and in the hint section of a computer magazine we had, but I didn't get either for a long time. "Zulu alert" mode lets you take as many enemies off the sky as you can, with infinite ammo.
Edit: I now remember that the first training mission is something like "shoot two target practice boards in sector E5". You have to be very meticulous to find those just by flying around!