We are actually restoring a YP-59A Airacomet to flight status. I am on the project and have been for 8 years. Ours has the GE I-16 engines of 1,600 pounds thrust (hence, GE I-16). The prototypes had the Whittle copy GE I-A engines of 1,200 pounds of thrust. The GE I-16 was the first American improvement to the Whittle engine. The 2,000 pound thrust engines came later as the J-31, which was an improved I-16.
The intakes are about three times too big and contribute enormous drag. The air enters, swirls around and exits back out the intake because the intakes are too big and take in too much air. Tough to blame Larry Bell as they didn't give him ANY data on the engines except a big block of wood and told him the engines would not be any bigger than the wood block. They didn't even tell him where the engine mounts would be located, so they designed the engine bays to accept the wood block and left out the structure until they had the mass and engine mount location data in hand.
They made 66 Bell P-59's .... 3 XP-59A's, 13 YP-59A's30 P-59A's and 20 P-59B's. Ours is the 7th YP-59A and the last hand-built airframe. After ours (tail numnber 777), the planes were buiilt on production jigs. It served to transition our piston pilots into jets and they went to P-80's from the Bell P-59. In that sense, it served well and we had a good jet pilot population by the time Korea came along. They retired the P-59's when the T-33 became avialable.
In any case, though historic in being our first jet, it would never have made a good combat plane.
If nothing catastrophic happens, we SHOULD fly our YP-59A in 2014, assuming the fuel bladders don't leak.