I really appreciate your voluntary team work team for developing this extraordinary IL-2 flight simulator and game! You are working with correct spirit of realistic touch to history and flying! Here are my first impressions as a bomber pilot about the new 4.10m patch.
Good new things in 4.10m:
- Fine new planes, these are always welcome, thank you!
- More selection of difficulty settings for added realism.
- Possibility to set channels to navigate by radio station direction finding.
The Bomber Faults in 4.10m:
- New safety fuse (bombs that require some time to cock) prevents low precision bombing.
- Most bombs are still launched as pairs, not one by one.
Suggested improvement to fix safety fuse low bombing fault:
The new 4.10 m bombs safety feature that require some time to cock bombs prevents the way of low precision bombing like
'slide bombing', 'bounce bombing', 'skip bombing' and in general all low delay precision bombing modes. Bombs just won't any more explode when hitting targets low..! This safety fuse alone makes 4.10m for an advanced bomber pilot unusable. I still have to keep to 4.09m to practise bombing...
In reality, bombs were fused with suitable delays for each mission. For example, Finns sometimes precision bombed bridges low with a group of Blenheims carrying bombs delayed for 30 secs with no initial safety delay. This allowed the bomber group to drop bombs quickly and accurately low and the whole group would we away before the bombs exploded 30 secs later. A 4.10m style forced safety fuse would have prevented bombs from exploding.
To preserve low precision bombing methods in IL-2, I suggest to either
remove the new 4.10m bomb safety fuse, or better still, to
let pilot set the safety fuse on or off.
Bomb SALVO Fix to Consider for the Next Patch?
The otherways very realistic IL-2 has got from its beginning one great bomber reality flaw: The bombs are always dropped as pairs only. There is no chance to set bomb SALVO for bombing drops individually, one by one, as in reality.
It may seem a laborious job to set all bombers for one by one bomb SALVO. However, there are good news: It already has been done!
There already is a '
Weapon Control Mod' to fix IL-2 bomb SALVO built by ZloyPetrushkO that has proved to work well. I have test flown with it for months and have only good to say about it. The Weapon Controller lets pilot set into IL-2 conf.ini file the SALVO to drop any number of bombs individually or in pairs or at desired intervals! Now this is like it was done by the bomber crews!
Bomber Pilot's Wish Nr.1 
Maybe you could consider to add this 'Weapon Controller'
bomb SALVO fix to next IL-2 patch..? If not yet to 4.10m, maybe the one after it?
This is a shy bomber pilot's wish who would like this flight sim keep and improve its fine feeling of reality!
More about the 'Weapon Controller' to fix the IL-2 flight sim bomb SALVO on
another thread.
Best Regards for Fine Work!
- J. Hartikka -
IL-2 Virtual Bomber Pilot
Finland