Hey..look...the Germans are getting Go229, He 162 and the famous SuperUberTeslaToxic-Rockets...and US is getting a Brewster Buffalo (one of the worst fighters in WW2)

Maybe, but it is an arcade game and a plane that is really bad in real life may fly circles around the better planes. It's likely that all the planes will not differ that much in handling ability. I would bet the the flight models are basically the same with little based on the real performance of the planes. Some may be a little faster (jets) or have more guns or carry a bigger load, but I would bet that they are evenly balanced for arcade game play.

We were pretty restricted to what we could put in due to licensing arrangements that the aircraft manufacturers demanded. I would love to have had the Mustang and Flying Fortress, but the Spits were every bit as cool.

Our initial design sessions went something like this:
"Can we have this?"
"No license..."
"Can we have this?"
"Again, no license, sorry..."
"Cool! Embrace the horror! So can we have this?"
"Did that even exist?"
"Who cares, it looks like fun!"

It was a design choice, either fight the big aircraft companies on the "fair use" laws, or make the game wilder and (I feel) far more fun. Reality wasn't the key feature for this franchise, so we made the best with semi-reality .

BTW, all the cool weapons in the game were at the very least on the drawing boards, most were in testing. Even the guided missiles which saw action. We didn't need to stretch reality that far really to come up with a unique WW2 experience.

Its always a fine line you need to stay on as a designer. Too far into fantasy and you lose touch with your subject, too far into reality and its just plain boring. I think we got pretty close to the happy middle on this one.