What about the dozens of other pilots from those squads and that **** that dropped like flies? It's obviously got next to nothing to do with him if one pilot is a million times more effective than all the others.
Since this is the only part that even matters about Petrarch, I'll only address this. The rest is irrelevant.
Anyways. We used to complain about wingmen being useless too, but that's a function of difficulty level more than anything (and how well the player manages them; if you're ridiculously on top of it in battle management you can get an awful lot out of them), so we've kind of gotten beyond that.
Kind of like we've gotten beyond assuming Command is moronic for doing things they wouldn't have known to do.
But really, I'm glad that's consistently your personal experience, but it's not mine, and it's even consistent across difficulty. So, no, these guys aren't me. But they're not bad, either. In fact, if we go by "they all died so they're clearly morons" the worst pilots in the game are Vasudan in my experience, and beyond Petrarch's control.