First why are you comparing warbirds to gliders. Unpowered flight vs powered flight and wing loading are two completely different fields. Of coarse you would want light wing loading with a glider for longer flight/ soaring times. With a large warbird it is in a way irrelevant to me, as a higher loaded wing actually flys better, it is more stable in the air, is less affected by turbulent air pockets, and also handles crosswinds better. Back to landing speeds, irrelevant as well. I have had 2 Top Flite ARF 84" Mustangs for comparison, one just to get the feel for warbirds years ago, very light, no heavy retracts or extra gear, the more recent, fully fiberglassed, heavy retracts, extra gear, scale acceseries, ect, ect, difference in weight 6 lbs. As far as landing I really did not notice much of a difference, however flight characteristics and ease of flight was far better with the heavier plane.

If you want to lean the bird down to each their own. to me, fact of the matter is that this is a warbird discussion forum and when it comes to warbirds lighter does not necessarily mean better.

Im not about to start throwing lead bars in my planes but I dont really worry about cutting corners or altering plans to cut the weight down either. I have never had any plane to date that I really thought to myself I wish I could land slower in fact the opposite. I like realistic flight, and it actually bothers me when flying my sport planes that some of them the plane has to be almost crawling before it will stall out and get on the ground. I dont like it when I am idling a plane 10 ft from the ground, make my final turn, and fly some 500 ft. to the runway and still need to slow more before the plane will be flying slow enough to flare to land.