WWII of course, crashes of pilots coming in to fast on a cv landing and/or runway without gear, all you see is broken propeller, maybe wing damage, not an explosion from hitting the ground hard. I have never seen a plane blow up from hitting the bottom of it on the ground before, don't even know if it's possible to do that. That's the realistic I'm talking about
How can you ask for realism when you don't know what is real or not? Your only basis to measure realism is what you perceive to be 'realistic' and not what truly was realistic.
For example, you decry planes catching on fire during a hard landing as unrealistic because in your own words you don't think it's possible for it to happen.
Here is a picture of a passenger jet airliner that caught fire after a hard landing.
Here is a picture of a Hellcat on fire after a hard landing on a CV
B-29 after it exploded and burned during a crash landing after a mission
B-26 burns in a field after forced to ditch short of the airfield
ground crews spray foam on a B-24s engines that started to catch fire after the Liberator came in for a hard belly landing.
Another B-29 that exploded and burned while crash landing after an aborted mission
ack-ack