I think the underlying problem is that people don´t like to loose fights. Some less so than others. Flying mid or even early war planes means more loosing - people don´t like that. Is not that the P51D is so pretty and shiny, its that its very deadly - and that you are not likely to loose in it.
Other games have gone through some changes to make "dying" less painful for a player. This seems to be a necessity with online PvP games - for every kill you need a victim. One happy player, one sad player.
Look at Battlefield versions through the years. It used to be that you had to respawn WAYYY in the back of the battlefield (like we do now in AH) - so getting killed was very frustrating. Nowadays you can spawn back into the middle of the fight. Now while this makes it less frustrating to die, it also makes it less satisfying to kill.
Getting steamrolled by overwhelming numbers is HUGELY frustrating - and people will log in frustration. Not everyone has the german mindset of fighting a clearly lost battle for YEARS with tenacity.
Steamrolling others is MILDLY fun. To balance things (HUGELY vs MILDLY) out, we need to give the side some boost that gets steamrolled. Otherwise there will be no one to steamroll. I am open for ideas, but eventually it will boil down to make things harder for the steamrollers, which they will not like -> hence the ENY debate.
Jan