not quite, a plane needs to roll before it can explore its turn rate. a plane can be great at one and not so good at the other and be easily out maneuvered. there are 6 planes of motion and two directions of roll involved in maneuverability not just left or right.
Wow. No.
A rigid object's position is defined by 6 degrees of freedom - [X, Y, Z] (translational freedom) and [roll, pitch, yaw] (rotational freedom).
Each of these has a corresponding velocity component and an acceleration component.
A pilot/airplane traveling horizontally along the X axis (which we assume for simplicity) has direct control over his acceleration in the X direction and indirect control of his acceleration in the other translational directions.
The direct acceleration control comes from throttle and drag. The pilot has indirect control over the acceleration in other translational directions via the use of roll and pitch to orient the lift vector and increase/decrease it. Alternatively the pilot could use roll and yaw to do the same, but it is generally less efficient because the lift provided by yaw is much less than the lift provided by pitch.
Of course this does not contradict your point that roll is important. But BnZs has already covered that.