Il-4

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by ADorante

The DT 4.11 patch comes with several new Single Player Missions, even for the IL-4. Check it out. I believe the creators want to give us an example of the historical environment and mission parameters under which those bombers flew.
Other missions for Hs-129 and Pe-8 are also new. There's even an offline campaign for the Finnish Fiat G.50.

To find all new single mission without getting confused by older missions I scanned the directory tree of the compressed patch file with 7-zip, but you could also unpack the patch into an empty directory and search there.

I had some help with researching IL-4 operations. There is surprisingly scarce material out there in English and I suspect not that much more in Russian. The Soviet Air Force didn't focus much on long range bomber operations. As many know, aircraft like the Pe-8 saw limited and often poorly planned use but aircraft like the DB-3/IL-4, Pe-8, Li-2, and later the B-25 and Tu-2 were organized in long range regiments for bombing Helsinki and Berlin amongst other targets.

The other missions that IL-4s flew on tended to be more tactical in nature. The full bombloads featuring both internally stored bombs as well as those hanging under the aircraft tended to be used for bombing airfields, fuel dumps, and other more tactical operations along the front. They were used virtually everywhere but it seems that not a lot is written about them specifically.

IL-4s did get used quite a bit in the north and south for anti-shipping which is why two of the missions I created for 4.11 are designed around torpedo attacks. One is small scale and one is larger scale. They aren't historical per-say but they represent the units and types of operations that they may have participated in. Now...the Pe-8 mission that we put together. That largely is historical from the base of operations to the takeoff time to the date of the mission and the opposition encountered. One version is very historical (the night time one) and the daytime one is much less so. I actually resisted putting more aircraft in that mission as there were quite a few but they all flew on their own and it was unlikely for crews to see too much of anyone.

[AndyJWest]

Those missions sound interesting, IceFire - I'll try them out. Torpedo attacks should be interesting, if a little precarious if there is much flak.

I've been experimenting with single-engine handling, and again it looks promising. No real troubles maintaining altitude with a dead engine at around 50% fuel and no ordnance, at least at low levels, and landing single engined is no problem, if you trim properly.