You have the ability to zoom in the sights on all AC in AH, only the perk tanks give you this option. The tank commander didnt aim and shoot the gun, the guy looking through the sight did. Might as well give F3 mode to planes, just to be fair.......
NOT
There is no zoom feature for aircraft. The feature you are talking about is a concession to a concession.
A life size view cannot be used on video games on the typical desktop monitors or you would have no situational awareness or peripheral vision. So they
shrink your cartoon world to give you more peripheral vision.
The smaller the world, the less detail you have, the gunsight zoom gives you that detail back.
The "zoom" gives you a life size picture at the cost of your peripheral vision. You don't get inhuman eyesight, it is more like what you would see while sitting in a ww2 cockpit looking through a 10" diameter tube.