The impression I get from reading books and talking to old pilots who were there is that once they got in a fight situation, it was full power all the way at least 90% of the time. And when they did reduce power, it was almost always only as a last resort to force an overshoot when they were about to die, not to gain an offensive position.
Granted, this ain't a big sample size so the above assessment could be wrong. Still, I can see very valid reaons for it to be true and not many for it being false, so I'll go with it.
IIRC, in WW2 something like 80% of fighter kills of other fighters were scored against non-maneuvering targets in surprise BnZ passes. Actual dogfights against alerted nmes against whom you maneuvered for some time, which is our constant diet in AH, were apparently very rare in WW2. Once surprise was lost, most times formations went to pieces and both sides withdrew in disorder to reform or land, rather than stay and fight as a bunch of individuals.
That being the case, I can understand wanting to stay fast. If the biggest threat to you is not seeing the nme coming, then the best defense (apart from having a lot of friends around helping you scan the sky) is to stay as fast as possible, so geometry and relative speed saves you from some of the potential swoops and run-downs. "Speed is life" and all that.
It also seems a nearly universal human trait that when real bullets are flying, you're way more concerned about personal safety than with killing the nme. So in most cases, I'd expect guys to NOT sacrifice speed for angles to get a shot. This in turn would all lead in WW2 to the relative lack of kills in non-surprise situations, the prevalence of HOs due to not using aggressive maneuvering, and the tendency to run for home when you lost contact with your buddies.
That's not to say there weren't individuals who worked the throttle(s) constantly. But I'd expect they were a very small minority. From at least 1943 on, most pilots on all sides were products of wartime mass training programs, not long-service professionals. And in the US at least, many of those who survived were taken off operations after only a few months anyway. So most guys would have been doing things the quick, easy, and safe way, with a few masters among them getting into the real finesses of ACM. But even those guys wouldn't have found much opportunity to practice their art in the usual WW2 situations.
We have a totally different situation in the MA, of course. Thus, we try to exploit all aspects of our rides, not just the top speed. I wonder if our behavior will change in AH2's TOD arena
