Agreed. I have worked in aviation for some 25 years now, and it has been my experience that pilots are often some of the LAST people you want explaining anything about their aircraft.
Anecdotal story, so it isn't worth anything, but I once watched an instructor pilot pre-flight and accept an aircraft that had its one and only propeller removed for maintenance. He was trained to look at all the specific things on a walk around, but obviously didn't really know what he was looking at. He was quite embarrassed, and rightfully so, when he realized why the journey log was in the maintenance office.
I am not trying to rag on pilots, as I am one myself, and this "Greg" seems to have an unusually high understanding of technical aspects, but ill defer to the actual experts in their respective fields for specifics.
At the risk of being contradictary, I believe Greg has absorbed a great deal of technical knowledge. I have taken him to task on several specifics that relate more to him not fully understanding all that he reads. I'm not the sharpest blade in the drawer, but in the 60's the 'powers that be' had not stooped to equity based degrees in Engineering, less so for MS. Greg doesn't present that level of knowledge in his dissertation despite having the Aerodynamics for Naval Aviators
At Ga.Tech and Univ.Texas many engineering Freshman student engineering majors became accounting majors when Calculus and Physics and Statics and Dynamics weeded them out the first two years.
A specific that I didn't touch on for Gregs P-80 vs Me 262 discussion - was that he went to excruciating and pedantic list of assumptions to extract guesses about how glide characterisitics of P-80 to extrapolate Drag vs V charts, even fooled around with Power (including piston engine) analogies to Jet to somehow conflate THP to static thrust of Jet engine. All he needed were contained in the 1946 Flight Test Reports of the P-80-
Had he looked into the attached reports from Mike Williams' Spitfire Perfromance.org - on the 1946 Flight tests, the tables recording GW, altitudes, Speed in TAS, g/hr, mi/g, flight time and distance - he had the V cruise and V endurance handed to him. The associated engine performance charts of static thrust to turbine RPM, of Velocity as function of RPM (and noted in tables), are given. The Stall Speed (Clean) is given for easy calc of practical CLmax. The top Speed is given to point to lowest CL attainable - aside from wind tunnel.
In the Tables, the Speed for max cruise is right there. the Speed for max endurnance is right there - both for specific altitudes and engine rpm. The Speed for stall is right there in the report. Given the table Speeds, engine Rpm and altitudes, the THrust is obtainable from from T vs RPM, and cross checked by V vs RPM.
The One thing he has to look up is a wiki summary on Wing Span and Wing area. Aspect Ratio is AR = Area/span or Area/MAC: With that and CL you have all that you need to know to build a CDt vs Speed, CDt vs T, CDi vs Speed, CDp vs Speed; T vs Speed, for a.) V at low speed stall, b.) V at Vendurance c.) V at Vcruise and d.)V at Vmax - for any altitude,
Ditto for his P-47 presentation save his lack of engineering was not as flawed as his lack of understanding of a.) How and under which assumptions were Combat Radius Tables were developed at Wright Field, b.) How operational practices developed for VIII FC evolved to 'slightly' modify assumptions for planning, and c.) how that translated to specific mission tactics and parameter adjustments.
In addition to the scenarios fro flawed understanding of CR, the other MAJOR factors were a.) Weather and b.) Winds aloft throughout the mission profile. With a 90 kt headwind, book CR 'will suffer',
But the worst offense (for me) was his complete blank regarding American Military Aviation history prior to, and through December 7, 1941 which launched into high gear initiatives that led to Long Range Escort delivery. I devoted a lot of ink to that subject in my last book, particularly a deep dive on "Bomber Mafia", "Not Invented in US" themes that may have existed - The latter I found some substance for at Wright Field.