I would also view the ability of the P-40 to dive to catch faster aircraft with a bit of suspicion. I am sure it was done, but perhaps not at the speeds given in this thread? or as easily as it is being presented?
we already have a debate about whether the P-40 could dive at 480 mph IAS or at 500+ mph IAS.
The manual that says 480 IAS was the red line also says that 5000-8000ft of altitude is needed to recover from a high speed dive.
So how much higher does the P-40 have to start out to be able to hit even 450mph in it's dive to catch the tip and run raiders?
Not every dive is vertical dive (or close to it) and considerable speed can be picked up in a less than 45 degree dive.
Perhaps a speed of only 420mph was needed to catch some of those planes, I don't know, but lets stop quoting max possible from a higher altitude than most P-40s aside from the F and Ls flew at.
We know they did catch faster-flying aircraft like Bf 109G-6 and Fw 190s - you can see the Luftwaffe loss records on that pretty clearly. The question is how they did it - some in head on passes and so on, but a lot of these were chases, as described by the pilots themselves. Pilot after pilot (German and American) noted that the P-40 could catch Axis fighters in a dive, and could evade in a dive.
The oldest manuals say 460 IAS, then they say 480 IAS, the later flight films (which you can find as videos) say 485, but this is for new pilots. Flight students. Combat pilots did push the limits a bit more. I have already posted the account of the Curtiss test pilot
Herbert O. Fisher who personally flew check out flights on over 2,000 P-40s and also went out to various Operational Theaters to train pilots. He said that he did a split S and dove from 20 to 10,000 feet and pulled out at 500mph. The exact quote is:
"
The standard procedure for an acceptance flight was a one-hour check of all major systems. Fisher had a specialty, he would take an aircraft up to "20,000, strain the engine upward, then go inverted, throttle full forward, and nose it over, losing 10,000 feet or more at 500mph+. He knew it was almost impossible to tear a P-40 apart in a dive, "
Now seeing as he checked out 2,498 P-40s in his role as a production test pilot, I'd say it's a safe bet it was generally normal practice to exceed 500 mph just as the various pilot accounts claim they did. The account above does also give us some idea how much altitude is needed to pick up that speed, with the caveat that it's different if you start lower. However I doubt they needed more than 3 or 4,000 ft to pick up ~450 mph.
Lets also keep in mind, once you are going say, 500 mph, even in a 45 degree dive, you are going to be at sea level
very quickly indeed. 22,000 feet per minute downward if my math is right. So from 10,000 ft you can be down to sea level in ~ thirty seconds, maybe a minute or minute and a half depending how fast you accelerate into your dive. Either way it doesn't take long. Standard combat practice in P-40s (for evasion or pursuit) was to initiate a Split S into a vertical dive which helps initial acceleration, but you would want to pull out to a much more shallow dive in not too many seconds after that unless you were starting from very high up and being chased. Sometimes they also describe doing a chandelle before a dive instead, presumably because they were already going fast.
Now it is true that not every pilot may have been aware of the limits of the P-40 or how far they could push it. From reading pilot accounts I gather transition training was pretty marginal at best particularly in the RAF. The Soviets didn't even have manuals they could read so had to basically figure everything out on their own. Guys like Fisher did go out to the combat zones, he apparently flew several missions with US units in Burma for example, but it's unclear how fast all this disseminated. I think training was a major factor.