As a young airline co-pilot I was fortunate enough to learn my craft with catains who had flown as commanders such aviation icons as the Hastings,Viking DC3 and many other heavy tailwheel aircrafts.They were never very complimentary about the handling characteristics in strong crosswinds of those aircraft.When you,ve got to get the job done in as near to all weather as possible the tri-gear usually wins.Yes I know of a highly skilled Tiger Moth pilot who manages to operate in 25 knots crosswind on a trial lesson operation.Not for the avrage pilot though and perhaps an element of luck involved.The advent of the one runway airfield as the normal has made tailwheel operations much more limiting!!
As a young airline co-pilot I was fortunate enough to learn my craft with captains who had flown as commanders such aviation icons as the Hastings,Viking DC3 and many other heavy tailwheel aircraft.They were never very complimentary about the handling characteristics in strong crosswinds of those aircraft.When you,ve got to get the job done in as near to all weather as possible the tri-gear usually wins.Yes I know of a highly skilled Tiger Moth pilot who manages to operate in 25 knots crosswind on a trial lesson operation.Not for the avrage pilot though and perhaps an element of luck involved.The advent of the one runway airfield as the normal has made tailwheel operations much more limiting!!
But you lose a huge amount of crosswind tolerance, forward view in some types, etc...
Not a huge amount (in fact, a Cessna 170 has better crosswind capability than a swept-tail Cessna 172, which is something I've discovered first hand!) if any at all.
It's not just prop clearance, but if you're landing on rough/soft/unprepared surfaces, you can fit bigger main wheel tyres only fitting two big draggy wheels instead of three, and also avoid the feedback effect of landing on a soft field producing braking of its own, loading up the nosewheel (adding more drag and making the nosewheel dig in still further) which is precisely what you don't want to happen to the nose wheel leg nor what holds it to the front of the aircraft.
Generally, tailwheel aeroplanes are better suited to rough field operation than nose wheelers. That's why a lot of such aeroplanes (Husky, Super Cub, Beaver, Maule etc) are tailwheelers.
Far from being xwind limited, many are far better to operate in these conditions than are tri-gears, and not just for the extra prop clearance.
Regarding the tailwheel airliner that went rabbit hunting, these days with few ATPLs having any tailwheel experience at all, let alone decades of it as they did back in the day, it's not unusual for them to struggle with such machines. I'm told BAe used to have a lot of trouble finding company pilots who could handle their Mosquito on the ground (the one that crashed at Barton off a flying display - nothing to do with it being a taildragger); thousands of hours and lots of big jet time don't give you the engrained foot / eye / hand co-ordination needed to competantly handle a taildragger. Only taildragger experience can give you that!
I am far from an exceptional pilot - just an ordinary Sunday bimbler. But I've never ground looped an aeroplane. Ever. That's not because I'm 'special', it's because I've been flying that configuration for well over 30 years in all sorts of conditions into everything from major international airports to the tiniest most un-level, tree-obstructed out of wind farm strip.
The DC-3 I flew had no tail wheel steering, and if you forgot the tail wheel lock, it could get exciting - and I was not flying in crosswinds to speak of. I have been aboard for some magnificent crosswind landings though, flown by pilot who do know how to fly a DC-3!
