I can't watch your film until maybe friday, so if you could describe your reversal I would give you help decieding flap deployment. But basically the 38 wants to get slow, and flaps help it get there. The F4U is a dangerous foe in a medium speed fight, much like the jug, and will put up a tremendous fight if well flown. The F4U can not, however, hang in there down at the <120mph range, and will lose position very quickly. Thus full flaps become the ideal. In a slow speed fight position almost always goes to the slower guy.
As far as the versitility of the 38 goes, I'm not sure what you mean when you say the ki61 can fit into any situation and the 38 can't. Success in any plane requires flying to that planes strengths. This is true in the 38 as much as anything, yes, but the difference the 38 offers (and why so many vets seem to prefer it) is that the 38 has advantages it can fly to in any situation. I'll list a few here, as maybe you've missed some in your initial trials.
At high speed the 38 can roll pretty well. It's no 190, but it can out roll a spit pretty well when shooting along at 350-400mph.
The 38 is damn heavy, and dives like a brick. The relatively lower compression speed requires you to be careful, but a well timed dive can get you away from many "faster" planes. The extra mass also contributes to good level flying energy retention, giving the impression that you can maintain rediculously fast speeds on the deck and often causing people to break off and comment about how fast the 38 is on ch200.
While the 38 doesn't really retain E like a 51D, it makes up for its higher drag with stall characteristics. So you're 50mph slower after your same zoom, but you can keep going up longer, and accelleration at low speeds is awsome in most fighters. Top out your zoom at 80mph and fewer planes will be able to follow.
At medium speeds the 38 offers a solid high drag platform and again incredible stall characteristics. Thus you can at least maintain position with the better medium speed turners until the fight transposes into a low speed stall fight. Flaps come out pretty fast at 200-250mph, and like all the american planes turning nose down with flaps out gives you a very solid turn rate. Take advantage of the drag and verticle performance to go for quick aggressive reversals, usually built around nose high barrel rolls.
At low speeds the 38 is one of the best planes in it's class. Only the early war planes can hang in there with you, and even against them you're going to have an advantage in stall characteristics. Verticle scissors is the name of the game. If you're losing position on the verticle scissors get aggressive and do a nose high flat scissors. Nothing else in the game is so adept at going nose up until 0mph and having total control in the reversal.
My impression of the KI-61 is that it's a solid medium speed turner, but is weak in both low and high speed fights.
Anyway, that's my two cents.
-pellik
