I've thought for a long while that alot of what you see in BOP/WOP was the basis of the original SOW that was to be released along time ago but Oleg wasn't happy with it. Hence some employee's and publisher parting ways. Some of those lost employee's may have become a part of the Gaijin developers team. Oleg's gift to Gaijin of IL-2 FM's etc sounds alittle suspect and I wonder if there is much more to it. This could be where Oleg gets his funding to continue work on the SOW project, especially if UBI is no longer in the picture.. Oleg has stated that SOW is better in every way than BOP.
This is based on some early screenshots of SOW that were almost copies of what I've seen in BOP, especially the White Cliffs of Dover, and village lay outs.
UBI announcing the eminent release of SOW in 2006/2007. SOW had to be close to completion in that period. What happened?
Not an official comment about SOW from UBI since that announcement around 3 years ago.
Aspects of BOP are very similar to IL-2, and not just because they're both combat flight sims.
Anyway its fun to speculate, and I don't really care either way, as long as we eventually see a new combat flight sim benchmark in the SOW series.