The whole thing about combat is the fact that there is no parity. You do not begin an aerial combat as though it were a sporting event with coin flips and tea party manners. It really doesn't matter which elevator did what in the oblique engineering sense. What matters is how each pilot uses his hardware to its best advantage in a dynamic sense.
Statements such as "the Zero would win a dogfight at under 300MPH." That's adsurd since who the hell is making rules to enforce a speed limit on both planes!!?? If a maneuverable plane was your opponent you wouldn't reduce speed and start turning. You would fight the energy fighter fight.
Roll rates are utterly meaningless when taken as gospel proof that one plane could out roll another. It can't ALWAYS or at every speed. If 2 planes have equal turn radii at 220 MPH it doesn't mean they do at all velocities or altitudes. Published data from tests performed in a clinical environment is nothing more that a basis for discussion.
There is way too much flight simulator "facts" that armchair pilots believe. Simulations provide only the most rudimentery form of input to the senses of aerial combat. Since there are absolutely zero pitch, yaw, roll or G forces it is only entertainment.
Speed and altitude dictate advantages in combat. Again please note that a P-47 WILL out turn a Zero in many circumstances. If a Zeke bounces you coming down on your 5 o'clock at 320 MPH as you lope along at 225MPH when you see him you are going to break right since he can't follow your turn due to the disparity of velocity. A Zero is maneuverable but it can't always out turn its opponents.
If any of you have read Samurai by Saburo Sakai you will know that IJN Zero pilots were not constantly looping, doing Immelmans and playing stunt pilot in combat. They made small control adjustments to bring the nose of their plane ahead of the enemy's. And they used energy tactics most of the time making one deliberate carefull pass from an altitude advantage to hit enemies. When any plane is 300 meters ahead of you on relatively equal speed terms it is quite easy to dial in lead. Staying attached to a thrashing enemy 50 meters ahead is another story left for WW I tactics.
This is not to mean that many kills didn't take place at 50 meters. It means there was not flying circus of aerobatics unfolding in the sky. Oft times pilots swooped down from height advantage and opened up from a short distance and slew the enemy fighter at 50 meters, kept diving and zoomed up to gain advantage once more. They rarely were corkscrewing through the sky in some macabre stunt show death dance.
Speed and climb rates are another thing that only seem to be decisive factors. Climb is NOT constant from runway to service ceiling. It varies. One plane will have an advantage during part of the climb performance envelope over another which may catch up and surpass it at greater height.
Without a sizeable lead pilots didn't end combat by climbing away at their choosing to leave enemies in the proverbial dust.
How far ahead and much of a disparity of top speed does a fighter need to just run away from an enemy in the 2-dimensional plane of reference? Just because you're 300 meters ahead in a plane with a 50 MPH advantage on the top end doesn't mean you can pure on the coal and walk away. Does the pursuer have an acceleration advantage even if your ship is ultimately faster? Is the altitude your combat is taking place at your optimum speed altitude or his? Is there enough altitude to dive away? Can your plane out run the enemy in a dive if there is? Simply because today you have a 50 MPH and 1 mile advantage over the enemy at 25,000 feet you can out dive him doesn't mean tomorrow you can from 15,000 feet at relatively the same speed.
If the wacko writing anonymous emails actually knew anything about WW 2aerial combat he'd know better than to ponder whether the 109 or 190 could turn tighter- at what speed?- at what weight?- at what altitude? etc. This obsession with "dogfighting" is sad. There were no dogfights as most people imagine them in WW 2. It's the most misinterpreted faction of the air war there was. Simply because flight sim developers always model the Spitfire as the most dominantly maneuverable plane in the game doesn't mean it was so in any or all circumstances.
This application of performance data as a valid aircraft versus aircraft comparison is the most flawed and juvenille pastime I've seen. This is the kind of thing me and my friends did when we were 10 years old. To throw in the phrase ".... which plane would win....with equal pilots?" is just bullshit because even equally skilled pilots have a vast reportoire of moves they can make in combat which prove no ascendency over the enemy in every application of those moves.
Air combat is such a fluid and dynamic thing, a beautiful merge of human and machine that it is just sick to attempt to reduce it to a competition of dry statistics from a book.
Clinical engineering-style test reports are not pilot combat narratives of what REALLY happened.