Give me some "holy sh... did that just happen" ideas

[Richie]

The mouse in Gunther Rall's cockpit. When he gets up to altitude for oxygen all of a sudden this mouses head pops out from behind the instrument panel gasping for air. That really happened. "Companion."

http://www.kondorgallery.com/mh01.htm

[gonk]

Have us vectored to an Un-Identified plane... Upon closer inspection we work out it is a Allied Bomber.... all shot up... smoking... but no one on-board...as they all jumped over France/Germany... It just keeps flying west....

or

We are vectored to something very fast..... a test V1 screaming west which does not stop. Might not be historically correct ... but would be interesting.

[Upthair]

Show the non-tracers during offline track playback:

It will be great to have the option to see every bullet's behaviour when playing an offline trk record - for analysing your own gunnery. I mean, in IL2 we can see how a tracer round misses the target aircraft, but we never know exactly where the non-tracers have gone.

[swiss]

Originally Posted by gonk

Have us vectored to an Un-Identified plane... Upon closer inspection we work out it is a Allied Bomber.... all shot up... smoking... but no one on-board...as they all jumped over France/Germany... It just keeps flying west...

Had such an encounter on the BoB server.

I went to check out an unidentified bomber which was smoking and leaking fuel, flying a huge circle in front of our base.
It was a 111.
The reason it flew circles was because of the autopilot was still engaged - and there was a huge hole in the starboard wing.
The they didn't bail, they were all dead - there was blood all over the place.

That was the first and so far only time IL2 managed to give me the creeps.

[Blackdog_kt]

Wow swiss, that's an awesome occurrence. I bet you have been snapping screenshots or a track

Gonk, very nice idea by the way.

[swiss]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

Wow swiss, that's an awesome occurrence. I bet you have been snapping screenshots or a track

I wish I had mapped this function then.

Luthier, there's a factor that has always been not taken into account by the sim creators, the only example that I can think of where the thing was actually simulated was the now ancient but at the time revolutionary "Fighter Squadron: The Screamin' Demons Over Europe".
Aeroplane structures are elastic: you can see wings flexing, fluttering or bending before breaking or on high G stress. A fuselage gets torn and deformed after a heavy landing or a crash landing.
Will we ever see anything like this? Pulling too many Gs and trying to make it home with a bent wing, hoping that the fatigue won't give it the final hit?

Another thing is the attention to the shock absorbers response: IL-2 planes are all too stiff on their landing gears, while in real life the suspensions play an important role, especially in the response on the ground and at landing.. a careful simuation of that and maybe an suspension failure would be very appropriate.

[1.JaVA_Sharp]

A few more things I can think of

1: you're on a scramble mission and along is your best friend in the squadron. He gets hit and has to bail out. You watch him fall and wait for his chute to open....

2: There is mention of events similar to this in some of the BOB literature that I've seen; same mission as before with one difference. Rookie pilot in the squadron and he gets hit. His radio gets set to broadcast. You'll hear what happens next...

probably impossible to do though...

edit: I know a flight school is included with the game, but what about gunnery training on a drogue town by an aircraft?

[changai]

1) Spec Ops mission, low flying with a Lizzie, sneaking through enemy airspace...

2) Mimic a night fighter of the early days, when they were directed by ground operators (no on-board detection device, just messages from the ground, your eyes and luck - plenty)

[Widowmaker214]

oh #$&# idea... well.. hard to reproduce this one...
but flying an ME 262 in IL2 46, I strafed a B17, ducked under it..
and was blown up by the B17 dumping thier bomb load.
The explosion also destroyed the B17.
Had to go back and look at the NTRK to see what happened.. as I saw nothing but my plane exploding as I went under the bomber.

More general idea... flying escort etc.. having to stick around and protect downed pilot/crewmen, or damaged/evacuating ships from attack until friendly ground/naval/PBY forces reach the unit in question.