Some of the things the British complained about were clearly production related - from the wiki:
"The gun access doors on the wing had been seen to bulge in flight, so they were replaced with thicker aluminum sheet. Similarly, the landing gear doors deflected open by as much as two inches at maximum speed, so a stronger linkage was installed to hold them flush."
That sounds like production issues. Along with all the faring over and sanding down and filling in of holes and so on, according to the wiki "Despite the success of these modifications, none were applied to other production P-39s."
If that is indeed true it sounds like a somewhat unfinished aircraft was being foisted on them which was indeed a problem with some American planes throughout the war. The problems we have already discussed with the P-38 are part of this, but also as seen with many other American types. The Helldiver as previously mentioned was a good example, the F2A as well. Many times, with many aircraft, the design was fairly close to the tipping point in terms of engine capacity and airframe lift vs. weight.
There was almost always a small raft of things that needed to be added which pushed things over the edge from a nice performing airplane into one that was struggling. American corporate culture didn't seem to have the impetus to do the whole series of fine tuning modifications (like faring over rough spots and fixing the landing gear doors and gun access panels so they didn't bulge out at high speeds) that could tip it back into the positive category again.. let alone sort out tricky and hard to nail down problems like compressibility.
This is the sort of thing that foreign buyers and more autonomous units would often do in the field. The AVG for example did a lot of that same exact kind of sanding, repainting, faring over and waxing to their P-40s to get every iota of performance increase that they could out of them (and increased speed by about 10-15 mph). The Russians did much the same and often removed some or all the wing guns from both early P-40s, Hurricanes and P-39s.
Eventually after being used in combat though many of these things did get corrected even by regular units. Sometimes it took a while, really too long - B-25s took a long time to get proper tail guns for example, even though the need was obvious enough that they put fake ones in the Doolittle raid planes. But the relationship between the UK and the US was often tainted with suspicion. The P-38 required a lot of faith and hard work to get into truly effective working condition (and it cost some lives in the process) but I don't think there is any doubt that it would have been a more effective fighter - at least in the Pacific and CBI - for the British than the Buffalo, the Hurricane or probably even the Spit V, had they been able to collaborate more effectively with the US military bureaucracy and Lockheed.
The British often made somewhat strange choices in their purchasing (both in terms of those accepted and those declined) and they were frequently at odds with the Americans, who they kind of felt should just listen to them more. The Americans were arrogant too and thought they knew better even when they clearly didn't. The Mustang is one of the few success stories perhaps in part because each side was able to claim responsibility for it's eventual triumph.
S
"The gun access doors on the wing had been seen to bulge in flight, so they were replaced with thicker aluminum sheet. Similarly, the landing gear doors deflected open by as much as two inches at maximum speed, so a stronger linkage was installed to hold them flush."
That sounds like production issues. Along with all the faring over and sanding down and filling in of holes and so on, according to the wiki "Despite the success of these modifications, none were applied to other production P-39s."
If that is indeed true it sounds like a somewhat unfinished aircraft was being foisted on them which was indeed a problem with some American planes throughout the war. The problems we have already discussed with the P-38 are part of this, but also as seen with many other American types. The Helldiver as previously mentioned was a good example, the F2A as well. Many times, with many aircraft, the design was fairly close to the tipping point in terms of engine capacity and airframe lift vs. weight.
There was almost always a small raft of things that needed to be added which pushed things over the edge from a nice performing airplane into one that was struggling. American corporate culture didn't seem to have the impetus to do the whole series of fine tuning modifications (like faring over rough spots and fixing the landing gear doors and gun access panels so they didn't bulge out at high speeds) that could tip it back into the positive category again.. let alone sort out tricky and hard to nail down problems like compressibility.
This is the sort of thing that foreign buyers and more autonomous units would often do in the field. The AVG for example did a lot of that same exact kind of sanding, repainting, faring over and waxing to their P-40s to get every iota of performance increase that they could out of them (and increased speed by about 10-15 mph). The Russians did much the same and often removed some or all the wing guns from both early P-40s, Hurricanes and P-39s.
Eventually after being used in combat though many of these things did get corrected even by regular units. Sometimes it took a while, really too long - B-25s took a long time to get proper tail guns for example, even though the need was obvious enough that they put fake ones in the Doolittle raid planes. But the relationship between the UK and the US was often tainted with suspicion. The P-38 required a lot of faith and hard work to get into truly effective working condition (and it cost some lives in the process) but I don't think there is any doubt that it would have been a more effective fighter - at least in the Pacific and CBI - for the British than the Buffalo, the Hurricane or probably even the Spit V, had they been able to collaborate more effectively with the US military bureaucracy and Lockheed.
The British often made somewhat strange choices in their purchasing (both in terms of those accepted and those declined) and they were frequently at odds with the Americans, who they kind of felt should just listen to them more. The Americans were arrogant too and thought they knew better even when they clearly didn't. The Mustang is one of the few success stories perhaps in part because each side was able to claim responsibility for it's eventual triumph.
S
