Sodim, I beg to differ, having flown a fair cross section of piston fighters {we kept TBM, P51,Harvard, Sea Fury, } long after their "best before" date the stuff about the old pistons being harder to fly is total twaddle! At the time I started in the military many courses started on the Harvard, no Tiger Moths or Chipmunks, one fellow on my course soloed in six hours, never having sat in an aircraft before! the fact is they were "different", if you started on aircraft with restricted forward view, a swing on T/O and a tendecy to swap ends on landing, no warning of a stall, then this was the norm,the first time I flew a nose wheel aircraft I found it to be quite unerving seeing the runway end come up in full view, its all what you are used to. Mind you we have the new breed of self apointed aces over here who will regale you with how difficult it is to even taxi a Harvard, they can be seen at airshows in flying suits with more badges and stuff than a Banana Republic president sounding forth in great detail about the superior skills needed to handle such a beast.Its true that many WW2 aircraft had bloody terrible performance {Stirling ect} but thats another story .