No, they're a new kind of quick mission. Just set up the mission as you normally would do and select "scramble" as the mission type. You will start on the ground, with enemy approaching your field.
Or, of you want to practice takeoffs and landings, set up a scramble mission with no enemy planes.

I don't know any of this for certain but while the Maddox Games and DCS teams are small groups of highly dedicated individuals, TD is made up of much larger teams of individuals with a range of involvement levels (none being paid) on a variety of different areas. So long as the core of it is organized (and IMHO it is) there is quite a bit more potential for things to get done.

It also helps that IL-2 is a stable platform that's been around for a decade so the work is done in the refinement rather than in the big picture stuff. Hats off to the DCS and Maddox Games crew... big tasks for small teams.

You may be right. The HE was definitely an oddball entry and I never quite understood it or what it was doing when I was using the Arcade=1 mode to observe.

I am finding anecdotally that the revised belting is giving me a better kinetic hit and I'm either knocking controls out more or I'm setting things on fire more.

That said I've only tested on a FW190A-8, a G4M, and the Ki-45 was always pretty light before it was exploding so I need some more time to judge.

The game started in Russian Theater. What kind of 50 cal ammo was supplied to the Russians?

Well that's a good point.

For every gun there is only 1 ammo load. That's why there is 151/20 and 151/20 gunpod. Gunpod was loaded AP-heavy especially for IL-2.

Many times asked for but never granted (perhaps ran out of table space or address bits) was an incendiary-heavy US 50 cal.
I'm sure it's been modded. If I modded, I would.

BTW, with every other round incendiary now I don't need to. Might have to mod back to play East Front!