[hw_penfold]

Well, the air combat of that period represents an odd microcosm of behaviors never to be repeated again, by another human civilization. Even if we wanted to fight another war the same way, it wouldn't make sense to even try it.

The trajectory of technology, and the circumstances leading to the qualities of the arms race and adaptive conflict within the period, means it was it's own little golden era of truly curious nightmares.

Riding a piston engine, in an uncompressed cabin, all the way to the stratosphere, all with the intent of using optical telescopes in good weather, so that you can drop kilotons of dumb bombs blessed with prayers that might guide them to a decisive target nestled among civilians?

To learn from that is to arrive at the understanding that the pace of technology must be permitted to trend with a civilization's capacity for its rational utilization.

Moving the progressive sequential improvement of technology at speeds faster than the sophistication of those that might benefit from it can produce a malignancy that backfires, to the harm of all those it could possibly (or even impossibly, in a hypothetical sense) touch.