[caldrail]

i know a guy who owns and flys a P-51 at our airport and he says you can't even takeoff with full power in the thing....you'll run out of rudder.

That's an interesting point. CAA guidelines in Britain for flying warbirds is to practice running up engines when parked, becaue invariably neophyte pilots are so put off by the noise and vibration that they don't use full power. In other words, the CAA are insisting, for reasons of maximising take off performance, that you do. Also, I noticed the manner the pilot of Kermit Weeks original condition Spitfire MkXVI used - he simply rammed the throttle open and lifted the tail straight from the off. Personally, that technique would probably scare me silly, and I recall the misadventure between two spitfire pilots at a fifties Farnborough air show in which the two men, who were to stage a race, opened the throttle and both immediately swung straight off the runway and taxied at respectable speed toward a very mobile audience!

I also recall mention of a mosquito squadron during the war whose pilots were suffering quite a lot of groundloops. The frustrated CO made his feelings known in a very forthright manner and told his men that Mosquit's don't swing, only you idiots make them swing! Funnily enough, the accident rate improved immeasurably!

It is true that the torque and gyroscopic forces acting on a powerful aeroplane are quite strong (I cannot speak from personal experience) and that in flight ramming the throttle open will cause the aeroplane to roll around the engine as much as go faster, but a lot depends on technique and feel. I suspect the P51 pilot you mentioned has his head screwed on and treats the aeroplane with some respect (and so he should - it's a high performance aircraft with imperfect handling qualities), but a lot depends on the behaviour of the aeroplane too. The CFI of the flying I used to frequent was once invited to fly a spitfire at the owners request (True - the lucky so and so really did) and flew it for the first time no problem whatsoever, but then he was an experienced flyer with film work to his credit (He flew an Eindekker replica in a WW1 movie).

The 109 for instance had a bad reputation and it seems the Germans were very wary of its take off and landing behaviour (Half the airframes lost during the war were due to accidents) yet the Finns who arrived to ferry their new 109G's home flew it in a seat-of-the-pants manner without problems, but then they were used to flying in and out of short fields and their technique was probably better, so we can say it's also a matter of training and practice.