John, speaking about Preddy and technical superiority:
Weren't the P-51 types in service in Europe about as superior in speed to the German Bf 109 G-6 as the German Bf 109 F-2 and F-4 were against some of the most common Soviet fighter types in 1941-42?
If you look at the standard of the average German fighter pilot on the Western Front during the second half of 1944, you can see that the victories achieved by the Western Allied fighter pilots from the summer of 1944 and onward were increasingly "easy". During the major air battles between the 8th AAF and the Luftwaffe in November 1944, US fighters shot down an average of about ten German fighters for each own loss in air combat. That indicates quite an inequality between the two sides, which also can be translated into "easy Western Allied victories".
See:
http://www.bergstrombooks.elknet.pl/nov44.htm