"Aerodynamic drag"
I have no way to test aerodynamic drag with the E6B, I can only test weight. It's a shame that Hitech doesn't offer a suite of flight test tools to go with the offline simulator - a lot of the people on these boards absolutely love statistics and numbers, and I can imagine the raw beauty of official figures would shut some of them up. Perhaps Hitech could release Aces High into the open source arena, and then everybody could see the wizard's cards.
It is possible that a neutered Ju87 accelerates slightly faster than a non-neutered Ju87, or flies better in some way. Someone would have to time its acceleration and do some aerobatics, and I can think of more interesting things to do with my time than test a Ju87's acceleration. I could, for example, count the change in my wallet, and put the pennies into date order. I could experiment with water-based lubricants and elastic bands. I could apply my talent to something that would earn money, instead of giving it away for free.
"It's modelled into the planes that are able to lift gear. I just assumed it would be modeled if you ripped gear off a fixed gear aircraft."
As far as I can tell, even if you rip the gear off an aircraft that has retractable wheels, there is no impact on the aircraft's performance. It's as if the game sees no difference between an aircraft with retracted gear, and one that has had its gear shorn off. If the gear falls off a 190A5 the model is shown to have missing wheel well doors, although you can still activate the "gear raise/lower" sound, albeit that this seems to have no effect on the aircraft model or its performance.
I must state that I only tested the 190A5, and then only offline. Perhaps the offline arena has a different damage model, or there is a toggle in the arena setup that I missed.
"Who's to say the benefits etc"
You don't have to reply to every post. You could lift weights instead, or make a cup of coffee, or watch television.