The 152 is very much a late war plane, anyone can fly the early ones easily, but the late ones choose their own pilots.
0. E retention exploitation is many times more profitable than most other planes.
1. It has much better E retention than the D9, better than the 51D, even just in very shallow dives. The spit14 also has improved E retention over the '9, which sounds like late war-level optimisation of the design, because the 152's is obviously not a very great engine if not just power/weight-wise.
2. The plane is fragile and difficult to fly and fight in because of its nasty departure characteristics, just like the 190's, but not really that bad if you just know where and how thin the departure limit is. It's true you may be easily mislead to think it will just behave like the 190D in borderline stall situations, it does not. Different animal almost altogether.
3. Its maneuvering edge over the 190D9 is tempered with added danger. The AH 152 has a nasty tendency to enter an unrecoverable nose-high spin if stalled at low speeds, but only if you are rather (very) careless. It's just about guaranteed to win a 1:1 vs the D9 unless the fight victory depends on fast flicking, which the 152 handles thickly like the F4Us, the P40s and others; the tail will lock up easily.
4. The AH 152 is out-accelerated by almost all the other late-war monsters. And certainly takes eons to accelerate even at its "best" altitude. Pyro answered one of the times there were many questions everywhere about the 152's seemingly sub-par performance, and in his explanation, mentionned MW50 but never GM1. Kind of odd.
5. The perktag makes it horde bait.
Solution: Model a better version of the 152, the C would be nice, at least because we're not likely to see a D11/D12 anytime soon.
