You said "Fighter pilots will take all the fuel they can carry to include externals." I am saying that is situational and that if I am not going to get anything useful for the small performance hit then I am not going to take the performance hit. If I need to fly 600 miles to the target and then back I will, of course, take the DTs. If I need bombs, I'll take them. With the internal fuel range of the P-51, P-47N, Mosquito and A6M it just doesn't make sense to take the DT for shorter hops.
Correct, it's situational dependent. A long range escort mission will require every drop of fuel that can be carried. If scrambling off the field for air defense there's no requirement for long range. In this instance, if external tanks were hung and empty, pilots would have blown them off to reduce drag. .... and I still say fighter pilots would have taken all they can carry, to include externals, appropriate for the missions back in the day.
In the context of the post I originally responded to there was talk of DTs and a partial internal fuel load. Real world, not gonna happen. Here in cartoon land, for $14.95, it just doesn't matter and isn't worth arguing about. It's each person's choice as to how realistic they want to play, or not, or game the game and others.
From a real world perspective, pilots are not going to give a hoot about minor drag penalty of the shackles, pylons, etc when they go to fight. They are going to care about how much gas they can carry and how they can out think and out fly the other guy. One of ya is gonna die and the other one is going back home. Pure and simple. Something we don't have to worry about here in cartoonville.
One of the three most useless things to a pilot is fuel in the fuel truck.
