Well Krusty, first I'm much less of a "gamer" than you...for me the idea of randomized failures wouldn't bother me nearly as much as it would the gamers who disdain anything more challenging than stirring the stick...and I have not been "indoctrinated" to think anything. I make my own decisions...
You are also wrong about manufacturing processes from 1936 to 1945...for instance aircraft and vehicle engine oil and fuel leaks that were considered "typical"...petroleum refinement processes were primitive...engine oil did not contain 40 additives to improve it's performance...gasoline was refined with higher sulfur, phosphorous and lead content, and it didn't contain any detergents...steel was not refined and graded the same as it is now...aluminum was as new metal alloy and no two countries used the same manufacturing process...rubber didn't contain high amounts of carbon, silicone and latex polymers...computer controlled injection molding systems didn't exist...machining processes were still done by hand using tolerances that varied from person to person depending on the quality of the tools they had to work with...every nut, bolt and screw on a vehicle or airplane was turned by hand and torqued to general specifications according to the physical capabilities of the person doing it...and don't try to tell me that an average woman of the 1940s could torque a bolt to the same tolerances as an average man of the same time period.
You assume "proper maintenance" according to current non-wartime non-combatant standards...and you assume erroneously...and I can tell you with some first hand authority as well as conversations with combat veterans from WWII, Korea and Vietnam...that "duct tape and bailing wire" is not just a tongue in cheek colloquialism.
During WWII, regardless of how much an engineer designed an engine to operate within specific ranges, by the time a copy of it rolled off the assembly line in a manufacturing plant...it's durability was subject to the limitations of manufacturing processes of the components, the people who produced the parts and the people who assembled those parts...Russian manufacturing was prehistoric and the U.S. had to use a mostly female workforce and build a manufacturing system that had little time for process refinement...Japan and Germany lacked the proper resources to raw materials...England had great engineering and production processes but they still couldn't produce an aircraft engine that didn't leak oil.
As well, it wasn't unusual for a military combat unit to acquire gasoline tainted with water, rust, oil or anything else...it also wasn't unusual for mistakes to be made by ground crews with something as simple as engine oil...
I have not once said that engine failure was a normal thing that occurred in every airplane on a daily basis, nor have I insinuated such...although if you look at the coveted B-29 it is well documented that engine failures occurred almost daily throughout its history...so someone please tell me, if the pinnacle of U.S. strategic bombers during WWII could suffer from engine failures with the latest advancements in aircraft engine manufacturing at the time, what would lead you to believe that the engines from any aircraft couldn't experience even a small percentage of engine failures with the thousands of hours spent at maximum performance under less than ideal conditions and manufactured without the aid of 21st century technology?
*EDIT* I think you have misread my intentions with my previous postings...yes it would be cool to have some of what Raster is talking about but...maybe even what Traveler is talking about but I don't have a problem with the way things are now.