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Re: The best USAAF fighter pilots have been the soviets
Not so much "not being used correctly" as operating under different conditions. The VVS operations were generally defensive patrols at low altitude over a very wide but shallow front-line, countering significant German offensive tactical operations. Not the kind of conditions generally available in the West, where operations were at higher levels with a high proportion of offensive operations going comparatively deeply into German airspace, and very limited German offensive flying.
Had the VVS the capability to operate above German fighters, or the operational approach requiring deeper penetrations, then the shortcomings of the P-39 would have been as important to them as they were to the Western Allies.
Or, switching to the Pacific war, had the VVS faced an opponent as agile as the Zero, then the P-39 would have proven just as inadequate in Soviet hands as in American.
Given the expressed opinions of the Soviet fighter pilots now being available in the West, I do wonder whether the prime advantage of the P-39 over concurrent Soviet types was the general fitting of a radio. Lack of communication and the associated inability to use other than the simplest of tactics must have been a heavy penalty to the VVS.
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