Not more versatile in an individual airframe. The B.IV would have made a lousy fighter. The Lightning was extremely effective as a ground attack and considered to be the best of the American fighters at divebombing. The P-38's firepower wasn't as heavy but more concentrated and that helps to compensate. Oh, and it could outclimb the Mossie.
That is true. Of course it has to be remembered that the P-38 was never intended to be mass produced. In the initial specification, Lockheed was told not to expect an order of more than 60 aircraft! Instead they ended up building 10,000!
I'm saying that the fact that the Lightning wasn't designed to be mass produced should be considered. And that fact obviously didn't cause too much trouble in producing it.
But I was saying that the Mosquito was easier and cheaper to produce than the P-38. If they put they put the Mosquito under American construction and they just wanted more and more, I dare say it could have had hte highest production of the war.
I'm not sure that would have been the case because America had several good designs that were all in production at the same time. If America had been producing the Mossie it probably would have been produced in numbers comparable to the other American planes (10,000 or so).
Easier to build with once the initial costs are taking care of. I'm not sure what the "tooling up" costs for producing the Mossie would have been but that would have, in part, offset the cheaper production costs.
But I was talking about the development and production of the glues. Those were fairly complex (for the time) chemical formulas. The Germans had all kinds of trouble coming up with an equal glue. I imagine that would have added to the costs.