Know your own limitations and those of your aircraft.
Flaps increase your margin over a stall but may also make the stall more difficult to handle.
The Mustang fighter has strengthened combat flaps to give it an enhanced turning capability in dogfighting.
Some limitations become rediculous as the following story shows
Only two training aircraft were serviceable at Point Cook Flying School in January 1916. They were the English built Bristol BE2, a two-seater biplane with warping wings and an 89hp V8 air-cooled motor in each. Del’s reputation and qualifications as a pilot being well-known, he was ordered by Captain Harrison on the day after he arrived at Point Cook, to make a test flight, and to demonstrate his flying ability in one of the BE2a machines. He obeyed with enthusiasm. After carefully examining the aircraft and testing its controls, followed by several “rolls” on the ground and short straight flights across the aerodrome, he proceeded to take off and climb in a spiral, with banking turns, as he had done so often in his Caudron.
He was impressed with the performance of the BE2a with its higher engine power than his Caudron. It climbed much faster and turned more quickly, however, when he landed he was ordered before Captain Harrison who reprimanded him for what he considered to be “dangerous flying”. and ordered him in future not to make climbing turns.
This was a difficult order for Del, as a competent pilot, to obey. Captain Harrisons’s idea was that his pupils should climb only on a straight course, then level the machine before making a full turn, then climb again, in a series of zigzags. That was an elementary procedure for novice pupil pilots but ridiculously cautious for a pilot who was qualified and had full control of his aircraft. Del could not avoid continuing to incur Captain Harrisons’s displeasure and delighted in doing so.