Dave,

Your points are well taken!

As a adjunct to my FM "variations" post above, are the issues of riggers skill and pilot preferences (and the bracing accuracy possible in regards to the art of ground-crew maintenance), and/or the state of quality control during the manufacturing process, and also the effects of inclement weather on airframes in the field.

There's the often told story of the Pfalz D.III which was found to have a bag of iron-filings under the pilot's seat as the factory's means of balancing CG on this particular aircraft, and also of the prevalence of the Pfalz's beautifully tapered fuselage to warp under wet conditions and time, imparting interesting aerodynamic qualities to the aircraft.

On the topic of airframe rigging, most ground crews followed the manufacturers instructions for bracing up a plane (with some squadrons/pilots being allowed changes), but how exacting could this overall process be? As an example view the figures on one of my favorite WWI aircraft, the Hannover CL.III, for setting up the incidence, diherdral, and stagger angles for its wings and horizontal stabilizers (typical):



How many specific bracing figures can someone note here?

This is why anecdotal "evidence" of WWI flying characteristics is, while being interesting to note, not totally productive when envisioning a process for actually coding "WWI flight models" for a sim........the very nature of the process requires a certain "generalized-exactitude".

(what we can expect is no more, and what we can expect is no less)