Stalingrad Airlift from transport pilots perspective
 

Was wondering if their was a mission or campaign representing the many pilots who ran the flak gauntlet and the fighters evacuating and resupplying the 6th army.

Would be do able non modded with an HE-111 for example due their prolific use as a ersatzes transport (wouldn't know how to represent the overloaded nature of the flights). With a timer in Stalingrad airfield to tell you how long it would take to load the flight (in an ideal world some sort penalization for leaving early would be good).

Shell falling at all hours lots of fighters, overloaded and unsuited aircraft far too many aircraft, terrible conditions sounds like the perfect multi engine challenge. With the aim to run like stink, rather than bomb or mix with fighters.

or is it only me who finds this aspect interesting

I find it interesting, but Il-2 lacks any foundation for recon or transport duties (and I would argue, hardly any for level bombing). I would love to fly glider tugs like the He-111 Zwilling, or 3 Bf-110s together :grin: Missions in C-47s would be pretty harrowing, but online you would quickly become the "only" target.

Stukas and Heinkels are magnets to the enemy. Now remember that you're flying alone without the protection of a formation. You may get a single escort if you're lucky, but they typically get distracted by something shiny after a few minutes and abandon you. When you run into some fighter, they go after you with great vehemence. If you run into three, they will all shoot at the same time and try to get in that last shot. They ignore enemy fighters until you're a smoldering crater... :)

So, bombers and transports have always been second-line to fighters. The Heinkel dynamic campaign has you bombing a few trucks on the side of a dirt road rather than factories and refineries. Online, you have no assistance or protection (there is now AI online but you can't set them to fly in formation with a player).

Il-2 best models the operations of the Il-2 (no surprise there) and it would be nice to have a proper environment for bombers, transports, and recon, but I just don't see it happening in the future.

I do remain hopeful with patches and modding bombers, and transports are more viable choices with greater detail. Allowing to target building(point value) would be a major positive development as would Repair Rear-arm Repair with variable times depending on damaged fuel and ammo states.

The nice thing about the airlift scenario is can be used in many battle ground (examples in Spain during the civil war, Russia did it during WW2, USA early war, Berlin Airlift, French Indochina war)

Even with the game unmodded there is a huge place for bomber, you only have to keep in mind that bomber is not a lone wolf role (as happens with most of the other roles), I'm very proud to be a member of the Escuadron 69 becasuse we have so many people, along with the comradeship and our special sense of humor, that we can specialised in our favorite role, in my case it happens to be bomber.
There is many ways to do things with the unmodded game, while playing offline can be tedious because of the IA and its waypoint way of life, coop its where transport mission can be better done... but i think the limit for this simulator is where the mission builders set it. I flew a few offline campaing that you need to land on certain places so you can pass the mission, and now with the triggers mod thing for the mission builders we are going to see a new revive in Il2.