A big AMEN for Rotaryphile's comment. I almost had that happen to me. With modern proprotional controls we tend to overlook the maximum control limits. I was flying a T-34 and having a ball experimenting with stuff and found myself pointing down with a need for up elevator. I yanked up and snapped big time. Luckily I had enough altitude and composure to relax the elevator command and pull out (barely). The moral behind this embarassing confession is that you need to do some careful testing to find out the limits of elevator throw.

With the T-34 I went back to altitude leaving the control throw in high deflection and did the following. I started a large loop with just a bit of aft stick. Slowly pull back the stick which will tighten the loop - do this very gradually keeping track of the stick position. You will find a position where the airplane will snap out of the loop every time. Note this and land and set that elevator deflection (well just a smigdegon less than that) as the low rate elevator setting. Test fly and see if that setting on low will allow the airplane to loop every time or pull out of a dive with no snapping. Leave the high rates setting for maximum throw for doing on purpose snap maneuvers.

We didn't see this kind of effect in the old days too much because the maneuvers we flew were big smooth ones and everybody set up their airplanes with just enough elevator to do them. That was true also of scale ships. There were very rare instances of snapping and plopping into the dirt on landing but not all that often.

Today we tend to think of lots of snapping maneuvers, tight maneuvers, etc even on scale ships and so we get into the area of too much elevator throw. I actually had this happen on a Sig Little Rascal. CG too far aft and too much elevator travel (I don't read directions - too much testosterone). I did a little hand launch and pulled a lot of up elevator about 4 feet off the ground. What followed was 3 snaps with random recovery that never got higher that 5 feet or lower than 1 foot. Finally I stopped messing with the stick and whow, it flew away just right! I then took my own advise and did the loop and snap/elevator tests.