What's missing from this conversation is deep skepticism toward first-person reports of aircraft performance, nearly all of which is anecdotal. This kind of stuff just isn't reliable; that follows from the nature of human psychology. We are not infallable reporting machines, purely rational and free of bias... which goes double, triple, or even more when it's a war vet speaking about what happened 50-60 years ago.
Any kind of performance data must be garnered from someone who is trained to test and record that kind of data, under controlled conditions.
As for the feel of an aircraft, no data can reflect it, and that's where pilot experience is valuable.