Well P40's vs Nates would wouldent they:)
From Americas 100,000:
P. 196
DEc. 41-Aircrobas are taken out of RAF service they are labeled unsatisfactory. Deleveris stop at about 80 Aircraft and 179 British Aircraft are taken over by the US, 212 go to Russia and 54 of those are lost at sea while being delevered.( I beleave these are C models)
June 30th 1942Ninety three P-400 Aircraft have goten to Russia by this time.
Feb. 44 The peak inventory of P-39's in the USAAF inventory is reached 2,150 Aircobras are in service, A large number are used as trainers in the US.
Oct. 44, P39's in Soviet service are being replaced by Russian fighters.
Total P39 production represented aprox. 9.6 % of US fighter production.
Jun, 44; The Bell P-39 is going out of production after a total of 9558 units have been delivered. of this total 4,924 (aside from P 400's) have been allocated to Russia under lend lease. Approximately 4,758 A/C actually reach Russia.
Over all at any given time in Russia P39's acounted for a very small percentage of the total Soviet fighter force, all together they represented less than 4% of the Soviets total fighter force including all types.
I am shure at some place at at some time they did make a contrabution, particluarly impresening soviet airmen who were in some instances in more obsoliet types to begine with, I would certainly not liken their preformance to that of the P40 with the flying tigers.
Something else to consider is Just what model of the P39 would HTC do??? I doubt they would do the P-400 which would be best suited to the early war Russian plane set, likely we would get a later model; 7,000 of the total P39's built were the N and Q varients.The Q did not enter production till Mar of 43, the First M's in late Nov. of 42.
So if we did get a P39, my gues it would be the Q that was modeled, and likely unusable in most early war set up's in the CT anyway and redundante in the mid and later war set up's, and not helpfull balance wise in the PAC, unless we get some new toys for the empire in that theater first.
I am not saying I would not like to see it eveunataly, it is just that I can think of several planes that would be better in it's stead in the short term.