I took a pony up because that's what I fly the most, know the best and be the most good to the mission. Oh, and every kill I got (including AKdream in a P47), was a plane that performs better at that altitude than mine. Sometimes it's not always about how the plane flys, but how the plane is flown. Fighting @ 25K in anything is a whole different ball game than fighting @ 5000 feet.
It'd be my guess that many in the P-51 flight had never fought at that alt before. Because the P-51 performs better then the P-47 down low, they made the assumption that it would at those heights.
From a couple of the films I've seen already situational awareness and target fixation were a problem for some in the pony flight. Command of the pony flight was pretty lax also. All these factors IMO is what caused the high death rates for our mission pony pilots.
I kept my eye on one guy I know is a regular pony pilot (forker) and he did very well. I don't know how he ended up, but when I had to rtb for fuel he had a couple of kills and was still going.
It was a great mission and I'm still learning from it and training for the next one. Some 38s in the next one would be icing on the cake.