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During WW2 the German pilots weren't afraid of the P38, it was relativily slow and not as manuverable as compared to the Kraut stuff.

However againt the Japs in the Pacific the range of the P38, and speed especially in a dive far outclassed anything the Nippers had. The top 2 American Aces of WW2 both flew P38's in the South Pacific....Dick Bong with 40 kills and McGuire with 38. It was also the plane that sent Yamamato to his grave.

The top scoring Japanese Ace of the war shot down 104 American Planes, and was killed in the Philiphines in 1944 while flying a transport plane to pick up some new fighters. The highest surviving Japanese Ace of the war shot down 63 American planes, was seriously wounded losing the sight in one eye during the Guadacanal campaign in 1942 and virtually sat the rest of the war out...however he had the distinction of being one of the only Jap pilots to shoot down a B29 bomber late in the war. Saburo Saki....the Japanese Naval Pilot at the begining of WW2 was probably the best trained pilot of the day..he virtually had the equivalent of the training of a modern day jet fighter pilot...basically 5 years of training...they just couldn't replace them, nor could they replace an obsolete fighter by 1943 the Zero.