My father flew and instructed in WW2 also.
Ponder this thought: would the AAF or any Air Force approve an aircraft that was basically uncontrollable on takeoff roll? Knowing that their "target population" for potential pilots was a group of people who, in 1940, had little if any familiarity with hi-tech motorized machinery?
Would they design and accept aircraft that "did not have enough rudder"?
Obviously, no. They did design and accept some aircraft that required specific procedures to operate safely and correctly. For example, MANY of the fighters required that you did not jam in full power until you had enough airspeed to make the rudder effective. This, however, was a simple learned behavior, not some cosmic application of inhuman leet pilot skill.
I haven't flown the WW2 fighters, but I've got time in T-6 types and twitchy little S2B Pitts aircraft. Enough to know that if I follow procedure, things work they way they were designed. If I don't, I get to do the rudder pedal ballet. 2000 HP doesn't matter; technique does. You can get in trouble in a 200HP PT-19 if you don't follow correct procedure.
And THAT boils down to this basically: Get enough airspeed to make the rudder effective BEFORE you lift the tail and BEFORE you go to max power in the high-horsepower aircraft. Usually, something around 50 mph will do it, too, sometimes a bit more.
Lastly, consider this. If it was a difficult as you think, takeoff training losses would have been unacceptable. It was a skill to be mastered, yes. And hundreds of thousands (millions?) of farm boys with no previous flying experience were in combat with roughly 200-250 total hours of flying time (in the US... other countries gave far less training.)
So, Erg, I'll put you in the totally misinformed "Damn the realism! Give me difficulty instead!" group.
BTW, thanks HT. I figured it had to be something like that in the programming.
