Absolutely! A good friend of mine would do that a lot with a Cessna, was always great fun being in for the ride and buzzing sail boats!

On the subject of flying under bridges it would be cool if there were some places where bridges span deeper than the normal IL-2 Height and the ability to make AI aircraft fly under them for some interesting user made missions, hangers with doors open at both ends as well. This might provide a Holy Sh*t moment if you had a Tiger moth fly under or through a hanger in a one-off mission.

Unpainted Spam tin cans and tin from other kinds of cans were used for quick repair.

I'm sure some of us would get a kick out of a visual inspection of the plane and finding out we have one of those gems.

I'd like the ability to play single-player mission, e.g. defending an airfield against a much larger enemy. Then, if I happen to get my hurricane shot to crap but still being able to land, I could continue the fight in another hurricane.

In IL2 you can only restart the mission, you're going to loose advantage of having shot down some enemies already.

I would love to be able to fly over a naval port and see the Home fleet sailing out to meet the Germans.
And I really want to see the evacuation of Dunkirk. ;)

complex gear failures; malfunctioning or lowering itself (would be nice to see it go up und down, up und down) if the pneumatic system has been hit












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no longer SUP

1. Remove "enemy destroyed" messages while in air. You get this info when returning to base and you get to see the kills in grainy B/W.

2. Achiving certain amounts of kills unlocks different types of nose art.
(5 kills - you get to pick some hand written text. 10 - kills you get to pick some nicely done images.)

3. Progress unlocks rewards, like a very nice custom skin, or you get asked to do some hairy missions. Like low level recon into France.

4. When you rise in the ranks you get to test some prototype planes like a recon spit or some special armament.

5. People who fly with no outside views get to have full view after landing and inspect damages or simply just check the kite out.

Some small suggestions
 

It would be nice to have at the start of a career a set of training missions to simulate you working up your skills on a new aircraft. Perhaps landing one of your training missions in some danger (being jumped by an enemy flight, having to try to get away in your unarmed training kite).

Same goes for when a campaing transfers you to a new aircraft type: some familiarization with the new airframe would probably be realistic before being thrown into combat with it.

Not all missions should have to result in combat (in reality it was often 1 in 10 that got into a shooting situation). Idealistically, a non-combat mission can still be made exciting, perhaps by making the scenery interesting (seeing/reporting ship movements, rail or road traffic, other aircraft).
Also weather changes can make a mission interesting: incoming fog or rain-squalls can make the navigation challenging, and result in an adrenaline-raising landing.

With respect to navy shipping: historically these guys were shooting at every airplane (shoot first, ask questions later), especially in reduced visibility. 1C might consider to recreate this AI behaviour; it will ensure that everybody respects navy ships :)

Absolutely!

You actually loose a huge amount of immersion by having everything spoon fed to you on the HUD screen. All that stuff was the first thing I removed from my Il-2 when mod techniques became known.

I like this one. :)