To the best of my knowledge, neither Doolittle nor Spatz ever commanded a fighter squadron or a fighter group as an active flying unit level commander. In truth, for the most part, the 8TH AF as a whole had a poor perfromance record in general, and failed to take proper steps to fix any problems they had with ANY plane or equipment for a very long time. The 8TH AF needed a scapegoat and a whipping boy to excuse their terrible record, the P-38 was a good choice for that role, since it was the ONLY fighter they had that could possibly do the job at all, for a while.
Further, Doolittle's quote was not only taken out of context, but it was based on reports from people who were not getting the job done, and needed something on which to lay the blame. Too many P-38 pilots in the 8TH AF were having success for the somewhat lackluster performance of the P-38 in the 8TH AF to be the fault of the plane.
When Doolittle decided to go up in a fighter over Normandy himself, he chose a P-38, not a P-51. When you're a General, in COMMAND of the AF, why would you choose what you thought was a third rate plane to fly into an area where it was quite possible you could run into enemy aircraft, especially when you flew alone? Hardly the telling indictment of the P-38 people are looking for.
The P-38 held the line from the time it arrived in 1943 until it was finally surpassed in numbers deployed in mid to late June of 1944. By then, there were plenty of P-51's and the P-47 finally had enough fuel to go the distance. Rather than add new P-38's, which by then were the J-15-Lo models and later, the decision was made to stick with the now more numerous P-51, and cut down on the amount of different maintenace supplies needed, as well as different pilot training, as logistics were still a serious issue for the 8TH AF.
The 8TH AF always lacked in properly trained P-38 pilots, from the time the first two groups arrived and went operational before their theatre indoctrination was finished. Both the 20TH and 55TH FG's had been continually stripped of trained pilots before they were even deployed, those pilots were sent to the MTO and PTO, because the 8TH AF was so inept as to believe that they didn't need or want long range escort fighters, of which there was only one available at the time. The P-38. Upon arriving in Britain, they were both already short of P-38 qualified pilots. The average pilot had less than 25 hours of experience in the P-38. The situation with replacements was far worse. Roughly 80% of the replacement pilots assigned to P-38 groups had NEVER been in a P-38 before, and were in fact barely competant in the P-51. If they could pass a test that included one successful takeoff, one successful landing, and a blindfold test, they were given a plane and sent on their way. Given the differences between the planes it was a recipe for certain disaster. While there was theatre indoctrination and training for P-51 pilots in Britain, no such thing existed for P-38 pilots, at least not until mid 1944 and later.
