BoB RAF Pilot Geoff Page (Spitfire)
"Fear became blind terror, than agonized horror as the bare skin of my hands gripping the throttle and control column shrivelled up like burnt parchment under the intensity of the blast furnace temperature. Screaming at the top of my voice, I threw my head back to keep it away from the searing flames. Instinctively the tortured right hand groped for the release pin. Fresh air suddenly flowed across my burning face. I tumbled. Sky, sea, sky, over and over as a clearing brain issued instructions to outflung limbs".
RAF Pilot Officer John Beard (Hurricane)
"The squadron leader's voice came through the earphones, giving tactical orders. We swung round in a great circle to attack on their beam-into the thick of them. Then, on the order, down we went. I took my hand from the throttle lever so as to get both hands on the stick, and my thumb played neatly across the gun button. You have to steady a fighter just as you have to steady a rifle before you fire it".
Lyle Shelton - Warbird owner (P-51d)
"At the top end, it gets to be a two-handed affair. If you use one hand, the controls get pretty stiff. At Reno, there are some times and places I’m using two hands on the stick. If you’re running a 450 mph race at Reno, one hand is ok. But you get up around 480, now you’re talking two hands on the stick to control the airplane. Then the throttle is always wanting to vibrate back, so you’ve got these various little elementary things going wrong. A lot of times at Reno, I’ve had the guys working on the throttle quadrant friction so that the damn throttle will stay where I put it, which is, in the final Gold race, all the way forward. You get to 480, 490, yeah, both hands - two hands. It'd be a pretty good aerobatic airplane. I’ve done aerobatics in it years ago. I did about three airshows in it; I had an aerobatic waiver. It basically is not a stable airplane: it's kind of like it looks - it's short and fast and wobbly and not very stable. But it handles okay".
I do also know that some British aces liked to push the throttle through the gate and leave it there, using 2 hands to shoot..
Like I said earlier, it would seem that 2 hands were used when shooting and when needed due to high speed and it seems to vary between pilots and aircraft.
For the purposes of the game they have to animate it with hand on throttle because if you change the setting it has to happen real time.
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