[majorfailure]

Originally Posted by horseback

The real P-38 needed NO elevator (or rudder) trim for speed and throttle variations (per America’s Hundred Thousand), but the Il-2 Sturmovik Lightning will go literally straight up when you push the throttle forward without shoving the stick three quarters of the way forward at the same instant and punching the elevator trim button constantly for as long as the speed continues to increase. (and it's a lot slower than the real thing was)

That makes no sense, as this would mean the P-38s wing would generate the same lift all over its speed range. But compared to http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/ data its speed seems fine.

Originally Posted by horseback

The real life P-47 needed no elevator trim for initial acceleration, but the in-game version does the same thing as the Lightning, with the added entertainment value of needing a ton of right rudder as well, and like the Corsair, the nose tends to dip as speed increases in the level plane; by this I mean that the angle of attack varies significantly with speed, something I've never read or heard about in these aircraft in over 45 years of reading, modeling or personally talking to men who flew these aircraft (you'd think that somebody would have mentioned it...).

And how else if not with changing AoA should a plane regulate its lift when changing speed? Faster plane - wings generate more lift with same AoA, to keep the plane level AoA needs to decrease.

Originally Posted by horseback

As for the Spitfire, I have no documentation or discussions of its trimming requirements at all, which would indicate to me that it was fairly well-behaved by the standards of the day (it was well-enough known as an easy aircraft to fly that even German pilots would say "Anyone can fly a Spitfire," which implies to me that they considered themselves more manly because they had tamed the 109...). Yet the Il-2 Sturmovik Spitfires demand a lot of trim adjustment, about the same degree as the Mustang, although with the added difficulty of that hard to read Turn and Bank needle arrangement.

I'd think the reference that anyone could fly a Spit does not mean the plane is trimmed easily, but it is easy to fly in combat maneuvres, and it does not stall viciously and recovers good (I'd think the IL-2 Spitfire meets all those criteria).

Originally Posted by horseback

In short, in this simulation these specific aircraft are much harder to trim and control than the real ones were, particularly when measured against the other WWII fighters depicted in this sim, and all of them demand un-historic trim adjustment in the form of multiple button presses for relatively minor variations in speed and throttle settings, as well as climb or diving conditions, and it is next to impossible to roll your trim settings to a set position in anticipation of a sudden change in speed or throttle, as the real-life pilots did regularly.

Yes, we need some indicator or gradation or whatever to see where trim currently is, and how much we apply. Then one could remember:
SpitIX, 90%, 3.5k alt, left 7 (or 1.5° or whatever) trim, down 34 (or XX° or whatever) trim - flies straight. Currently we can only do this if we reset trim to 0 and then apply trim settings, but this is counterproductive, 'cause except at landing speed a Spit with neutral trim severly noses up.