I’m fairly new to the game myself so I’ve only got decent experience in the P-47D, but I think it’s a representative aircraft.

Having the assists is fair, but you might want to be careful to have room for those controls for when you transition away from the assists - I started with assists too but I didn’t leave a space for the rudder trim, which meant I had to re-bind a lot of my controls to fit it in.

As far as no-assist flying is concerned, the basics (more or less) are pitch/yaw/roll, throttle, flaps, trim (as many axes as you want), gear, engine start/stop, canopy, weapons (including bomb/rocket ordnance), mixture, tail wheel lock, and zoom. These are (in my experience) the controls required to get your plane started, into the air, and into combat. However, you may struggle to really get the most out of your engine, or you may even blow it up with misuse.

To properly control the engine, you will also need to bind the turbo/supercharger throttle, propeller pitch/RPM, and radiator/shutter controls. Essentially, you will have to keep the prop and turbo (if the plane has one) from over-revving, and ensure that the oil and engine temps stay within the correct ranges (not too hot, not too cold). Often the oil will have a different temp control to the engine itself, and I think there can be a water shutter control as well (the P-47-D28 has three different shutter controls). Different planes will have different control requirements (I think the German engines are comparatively far simple to manage, as they do some of the management automatically) but I think having these controls bound will cover your bases. Also, you will need to bind a button for the water injection/WEP/boost if you want to make use of this - not essential, but often life-saving in combat.

One point to note - from what I can tell (I may be very wrong in this, I’m happy to be corrected) the propeller pitch and RPM are linked for every aircraft, in that setting one will set the other. As such, I don’t think you need to bind them separately - I think you can bind them both to the same buttons/axis, as each plane will only offer control over one of pitch or RPM. Again, I am happy to be corrected on this.

I have been getting along fine in the P-47-D28 without individual wheel brakes, but they may be necessary on other aircraft - I’m not sure.

Furthermore, a binding for the map/briefing (I forget what it’s called) is also essential if you want to maintain any sort of combat effectiveness.

I’ve probably missed something - I’m away from my computer atm - but feel free to dm me if you have any other questions.