Bombing out overcapacity and factories that you will eventually want to capture has been shown by YG to be an inefficient move. Russia’s initial capacity is 19, Italy 13, Germany on G2, 29 or more. This gives them plenty of extra cap. to place units so bombing them out isn’t very effective.
You don’t want to strike alone, or your bombers get picked off. But, if you have too many bombers, they can’t usually all be hitting the enemy capacity all at once. It is especially devastating to bomb them out in waves (both before and after their turn) by using multiple teams.
Malta is a pretty cool idea, its usually ignored by all the teams until later in the game. Its an annoying landing base, but its not the only one so taking it doesn’t end the UK ability to get into Italy’s business. The best use I’ve seen for Malta and the Air Base isn’t as a bombing shuttle its as a base to confront Italy later in the game with the US, as an unsinkable carrier protecting your fleet as it gathers to invade.
Otherwise, Malta is too vulnerable. You can’t protect the bombers until you have an Allied fleet protecting the island. The UK doesn’t always have enough power to confront the Italian Air Force in the early game so they can’t protect Malta alone, even with the Egypt fac.
Bombing the axis and Russia in the G42 games proved to be much more effective than I thought, it caused our opponent to withdraw from NMoscow because he lost 1/2 of his money….when we were the Allies we struck at Germany and Western Germany (avoiding all bases, minors and Rome) many times, without losing more than 1 bomber all said, and they were forced to repair them consistently or lose their Atlantic Wall.