I happen to live near the Consolidated Vultee plant in question it was in Nashville TN, and produced 113 planes. It was not a new plant, but a standing part of the Consolidated factories. The War Production Board just didn't get their act together. The P-38 was also a difficult plane to build, and required precision jigs for assembly. The USAAF needlessly tied up Lockheed engineers and fabricators on pointless projects that the USAAF mismanaged any way, when they could have been used to set up manufacturing facilities here at Consolidated Vultee, and train the employees to build the planes. Had this been done however, they could have stopped production to retool for the P-38K, and several other enhancements Lockheed had developed.
As far as the USAAF having a desire for the P-38, and wanting more, there were a few thousand on order when the war ended. Also, the War Production Board considered the P-38 to be so important and essential that they refused to tolerate ANY delays in production, for any reason. This pretty well refutes any theories that the USAAF didn't want any more P-38's. Only when the war ended and they couldn't AFFORD the P-38 did they cancel their orders.
Whoever said they were producing F4F Wildcats for escort carries is correct.
Documentation of 64" of manifold pressure can be found in the Lockheed charts in the article "Der Gabelschwanz Tuefel" by Dr. Carlo Kopp, on C.C Jordan's website "Planes and Pilots of World War II".
I have been corresponding with Dr. Kopp, Warren Bodie, and C.C. Jordan, while assisting on a project regarding the death of Major Thomas B. McGuire. The three gentlemen mentioned above were kind enough to verify those figures as correct. Mr. Jordan has a source at Lockheed Martin, and Mr. Bodie was an engineer at Lockheed for a few decades.
As far as how to deal with the German fighter in a dive while flying the P-38, Lowell said you could roll and pull a G or two and follow any prop fighter in a dive. Heiden never mentioned his maneuver, but said he could tailgate any German plane in a dive flying a P-38J with dive flaps. Heiden also said the the P-38L could do anything as well as the P-51 could, and he flew both of them.
The main part of your argument is, and always has been, that critical Mach is the single over riding factor in determining capability. I don't buy that.
You also state that in YOUR opinion, critical Mach is the reason the 8th AF abandoned the P-38. I don't buy that either. Although the compression problem was a factor, it was the other problems that the 8th complained about. Cold cockpits, engine problems, difficulty with maintenance, level of difficulty for the pilots, and the continual lack of planes and spare parts.
While not the same as military command, I have management experience, which is where the problem lay in the 8th AF. Actually, I did face a situation where a group of employees I was asked to manage failed to achieve the level of performance that other people using the same equipment achieved. The first thing I did was look at training and leadership. When motivated and qualified people were placed in positions of leadership, and the others were properly trained on the equipment, this same basic group performed as well as or better than any other. Anyone with common sense could have seen what I saw, and done what I did. Basic troubleshooting, nothing more, and certainly nothing special. I came to that position with a high school diploma and common sense, and replaced a guy with a college degree in managment.
Now, if I had plenty of P-51's, which the 8th did not, until mid 1944, I would use them. But if I did not have plenty of P-51's, and needed the P-38's, I'd figure out what was wrong and set about fixing it. If I had successful P-38 pilots, I'd be making them group and squadron leaders, and passing every bit of knowledge they had to every P-38 pilot I had, teaching and training other pilots constantly. If I had crew chiefs who could keep P-38's in the air, and didn't lose engines, I'd have them teaching the rest every waking second they weren't working on their plane.
The truth was, the 8th desperately needed those P-38's, and failed miserably at getting the full potential from them. Poor management and tactics in the 8th were the rule, and not the exception. The failure of Spatz and Doolittle to place successful pilots like Lowell, Ilfrey, Blumer, Heiden, and a host of others, in positions of command and authority, and allow them to get the problems solved, instead of complaining that the P-38 just couldn't get it done, speaks volumes, especially when those pilots were successful, even against the best Germany had to offer, while flying the P-38, a plane the 8th considered second rate.
The 8th had the P-38 in their inventory, and good pilots who proved they could beat anyone and anything the Germans could throw at them in the P-38. The 8th chose to ignore this fact, and replace the P-38, instead of finding out what the rest of the 8th was doing wrong when they flew the P-38.
When a man consistently succeeds in a machine you think is second rate, if you are smart, you take a much closer look at his ride. At least if you're smart you do.
I live in the world of must win competition. I make my living by producing winners on the race track. When something comes along that I know is going to give me a real advantage, I use it. I don't install second class parts on a race engine and expect it to win, and complain when it doesn't.
For the USAAF to send a pilot into combat in a plane they KNEW could be improved, and they chose not to improve it, borders on criminal mis-management. Sending a soldier into battle with a weapon that could and should be better is wrong. To deny a pilot any advantage that could save his life is absurd.
In the end, the decision to cease production of the P-38 came down to one thing: MONEY. The P-38 cost the USAAF over $130,000 per plane. The P-47 around $78,000, and the P-51 around $62,000. Only the Chance Vought F4U remained in production after the war ended for any real length of time. There were already tens of thousands of piston engined prop driven fighters in the U.S. inventory, when the USAAF only wanted well less than 10,000.
