I'd be curious to actually test it's acceleration in level flight as well. A few months back I found myself in a bad position while flying the P-38J. I was right on the deck in a low speed circle with a brewster. He caught me low and slow and I had managed to stay out of his guns for awhile but sitting there looking across a horizontal circle at him with all my flaps hanging out I knew it was only a matter of time before I lost that fight. I rolled level in the direction of some help and pulled the flaps in and tried to get out of dodge, by the time the brewster finished the turn to get my six o'clock I was already out of effective gun range and easily pulled away from there.
Either the brewster doesn't accelerate that well from low speed, or the 38J does it better than I had previously thought.
Sounds about exactly like the experiences I've had while flying the Brewster.
Saying that it
"acclerates rather well" (As Saxman put it) is quite far from the thruth. Its power loading simply doesn't allow very good acceleration compared to the most of the planes flown in the LWMA regularly. It really feels at times like it's very short on excess thrust in a close quarters maneuvering fight. Of course its quite low wing loading, high lift coefficient and good low speed control authority/roll rate still make it a very nasty opponent in that type of situation.
P-38 has one of the better power loadings of US fighters, it really isn't suprising that it leaves Brewster standing.
Brewster is a delightfully maneuverable fighter and it's a lot of fun to fly but it certainly can't compete in "the raw performance-department".