drgondog
Major
Can I ask what make you think that the Germans would have sorted the P-38 issues more effectively than the USA? The US threw a lot of resources into resolving the issues and I cannot see how the Germans or anyone else would have done the job any quicker.
The Germans would not have been so stupid as to lose the prototype on a publicity speed run and had a year more to study the issues with dive and high altitude intercooler issues.
The tragic problem with the P-38 is that it was built with only partial funding so the investment in production tooling was not made prior to prototype.
When the XP-38 crashed in Jan 1941 it took another year to put another ship in the air - by that time the Army was in a huge hurry and production versions were ordered before flight test started. A lot of mistakes and solutions were discovered but the requirements for production over rode the insertion of airframe /tooling fixes.