[caldrail]

That said.. most of these WWII aircraft were designed to take off from rough bumpy and eneven strips.. that was the norm at the time, and pilots were trained to do exactly that.. .

Again, I agree wholesale. However WW2 aircraft regularly came to grief in taxiing accidents and sometimes still do. In recent years I remember a hurricane digging its nose in after running into a rut. These aircraft balance on their mainwheels (unless they have tricycle undercarriage) and that requires a relatively flat surface. They can use roughish ground (I remember practising a landing on a field in New Zealand that resembled the Somme in 1917) but they aren't all-terrain-vehicles.