For some reason I had always thought once released and even if you die after, the bombs still hit.
They always did as long as you didn’t re-launch a new sortie before they hit. As far as I know, it’s always been that way. The reason is pretty simple. If they just stayed hot from sortie to sortie you could get in a PT boat/torpedo bomber, launch a salvo of torpedoes, die, re-launch and that first salvo would still be active. Essentially, you could launch hundreds of torpedoes at a carrier group.
As stated, HT made some recent updates as it pertains to player on player damage. Used to be that you would only get credit (after death) if no other player was there to get a proxy or did any other damage. Now, as I understand it, you still get kill credit as long as you haven’t launched a new sortie provided you did the lion’s share of the damage to the enemy. Thus, kill awards after death seem more prevalent.