I used to work with Kjell The Mad Norwegian Fighter Pilot. He really had been a Norwegian Fighter Pilot. He mostly flew the Republic ThunderStreak when he was in the Norwegian AirForce. He had an interesting story or two. One favorite was about how bad the thrust to weight ratio was on that airplane.

A couple of stories themes were based on "getting the airplane behind the power curve." It seems that on takeoff the pilot had to be very careful to not rotate until a safe speed. The airplane had enough wing to get it into trouble and not enough power to get it out, especially on takeoff. If it was rotated just a bit too soon, the lift would be sufficient to get the sucker flying, but the AOA would then throw some more drag at the sucker. The engine was doing all it could, which wasn't enough to actually accelerate the lump out of that altitude (which was runway altitude + 10-20') and in fact wouldn't accelerate at all. And the wing wouldn't give any additional lift. And the pilot couldn't get more airspeed by pitching the nose down, 'cause there wasn't any down available from that altitude. So the pilot was stuck at that altitude and speed and "climb" angle until some fuel burned off. Well, until the fuel burned off, or his flight path encountered terrain of any significance.

He told of one guy who wound up flying across the North Sea at wavetop, riding the pipe. He didn't know for sure he had enough altitude to push the nose down until he was almost to England, and was afraid to mess with the stick until then.