What else would you use it for? To make the tea?
Completely unrelated but when being taught for competion finishes in glider flying which is essential a conversion of all altitude into a Vne dive and fly-by; we were taught to leave the trim in "high speed cruise" and never trim away all forces.
Any momentary lapse of concentration and corresponding relaxing of the stick force would cause the glider to climb and not descend into the ground.
I cannot recall the source since I was just google-ing a couple of nights ago but here it goes;
The original P-51 design had a sea level max speed of 375 mph, hence a certain angle of incidence of the tail plane.
If this was not changed on the race aircraft you would need excessive nose down trim deflection which has the trim tab stick out further in the airflow.
This is what apparently caused the flutter and trim tab failure in the accident in the 90-ies.
From the slow motion accident sequence it is clear something failed prior to trim tab seperation. Might be the actuating rod or hinge mechanism.
It is hard to believe that somebody with this much racing experience (120+ races) would make a what would appear to be a "rookie" mistake.
But then again, accident reports are filled with experienced pilots.
I have to admit that despite the obvious tragedy this is fascinating stuff.
Like the death of Ayrton Senna.
Ayrton Senna da Silva