But - how significant are the new changes

[K K Rossokolski]

I would like to hear from someone...anyone...a justification for the bomb-dropping capability of an aeroplane parked on an airfield.

These were included for von Earlmann style campaigns, prior to the introduction of On-Map bombers.

One has to think outside of the box for their use. A player controls an airfield with airfield aircraft on them. While they control that airfield, they have air support available to them (via the indirect capabilities).

If the airfield is overrun, so is the players local air support.

Jason Petho

I can see where you are coming from, but there is such a degree of abstraction that it becomes bizarre ...a quality otherwise absent from the game*. I suggest that in real life, local air support is/was not necessarily lost if an airfield is overrun, destroyed or whatever. This attempt to give air support a more "hands on" quality has such an air of unreality that it lets the game down. There is also the question that the parked non-flying bomb shooters would not appear subject to enemy AA.
Whether an on game "working" airbase is desirable or necessary is highly debatable from a criterion of improving the CS product. You used the phrase "indirect capabilities" ......nothing indirect about WWII bombing....the bomber had to be airborne over the target!!! Bombers are NOT flying artillery in this direct/indirect sense. Direct fire only. To try and achieve your aim....an unnecessary one IMO....by using such a bizarre, contrived solution is a case of process once again triumphing over outcome. It makes a farce of the term 'simulation'.

The above said, the idea of an eye candy airfield full of juicy parked targets as an objective has some appeal. Nothing much easier to destroy than parked aircraft, even in revetments
Just ask Chuck.

*Except of course things like Maus, which were bizarre in the flesh.