I gave 1.37 a go last night, and in Arcade mode whilst flying a BF-109 E-3 I got into a turning fight and lost to an IL-2. This means I must suck gloriously (highly probable), or the Russian devs are slightly biased towards the Sturmovik
This game has a control mode called MouseAim which signigicantly lowers the hardle
to play flying shooting game for people who doesn't own joystick.
Even though the Flight Characteristics(how plane behaves at various speed, turn radius) can differs from the control mode to other traditional one(Simplified, Realistic), they are all mixed in the same match in arcade mode.
As Flight Model is inherently forgiving in the arcade battle, things like you described can happen many times.