It can't be perked.. It's just outside of perk worthiness.. If it gets perked, it shouldn't be for more than 1 or 2 perks max., and then some other planes would deserve as much.
The one weakness of the spit16 is that it isn't very fast level. That it's not rugged is mostly mitigated by how easily it dodges fire.
The respect thing is pretty nebulous. What does that mean? That I esteem its ability, or its design, or the esthetics, or as an actor in the AH arenas, or historically, the list goes on of all the different aspects to "respecting" an airplane. And even if you dislike it as I do, you may very well just neither respect nor disrespect it.. just be indifferent to it. I'm somewhere between those two. I have no problem admitting that historically it was on the "good guys" side, and that it was instrumental in beating the evil bad guys. Or that it's pretty much what you want to give soldiers in a war, namely a tool that's polyvalent and easy to use, forgiving and efficient, a design as foolproof as you can get them. In war it doesn't matter whatsoever how stupid something looks, only that it gets the job done. In that respect the spitfire is a great plane. It very much is one of the quintessential WWII warbird designs.
But in AH I think it's a bore, in fact I stopped soon after getting those magic 10 kills because the plane literally evaporates my motivation. Aside the fact that esthetically it's ugly as sin, it gives you no challenge. It flies around with no character, no quirks, it's bland as Honda's ASIMO bot's tango routine. It's neither hot nor cold, it's a pedestrian ride that I literally want to fly into the ground so I can move on to something more engaging. I mean that's the whole point of the game. To have the game grab your interest and pull you into the experience.
When I see some guys flying the spitfire in a furball, I just wonder wtf the point is. You aren't playing with the other guy because you're not offering any sort of level competition. The only way to compete with the spit while in e.g. a 190 is to skewer it BNZ style. And I can do that fine, but it's boring. It's boring to have so many players flying a kite that doesn't push them to improve their ACM so that the fights are at least a little varied instead of the same couple of flat turns, generic loops, or negative G dodges, all with mile-wide margins of error. That huge allowable margin of error removes most of the accountability for good versus bad decisions and enables the persistance of lower, rather than higher, quality of dogfighting craft. That right there is what dweeb is about. Winning without earning it.
You might call the people who are flying it "noobs"
Where, show me where I said that. I said the Spit16 is a noob plane. There's a difference. It lends itself to noobs and enables bad flying to go "unpunished". Make a mistake in e.g. a 190A8 or A20.. and your bellybutton is grass. Night and day difference.
and i'm pretty sure about 80% of the people that were online and sow it thought "what a noob"
wrong again.
Or should have I just ditched the kills like one guy in my old squad did ones because he was ashamed of being seen in spitfire 16?
again
I'm pretty sure all thous bish were screaming get that noob or something like that just because I was in spitfire 16,
again
but what do you expect me to take? P-40? 190? P-38? Tiffy?
Fly whatever you want, that's beside the point. You could very well have flown any of those successfully. Though it would have been way harder than with the S16, and the P40 would be a particularily dodgy choice.
I have only one thing to add to m00t´s posts.
Resorting to flying the 16 for getting kicks of winning against more skilled individuals in lesser planes, is like enjoying dancing tango in a certain bar featured in the movies "Police Academy" ...just plain wrong to my taste, but hey, like everyone says "its their choice" 
Nothing to add, but that I think it's fine when the spit16 allows even odds. That makes fights as good as they're meant to be.. I don't care who's in the spit16/8/9. But the Spit16 is overkill for all but the players lowest along the learning curve.
