"P-40B/C" Topic

Flight of fancy here (no pun intended) so please bare with me .. The P-40B/C is one of my favorite aircraft, they just look awesome to me. But it seems they had much more potential then was explored. I know that Curtis had a few experimental turbo/supercharged P-40's And it seemed to work well on the P-38's Allison plants, but they were too large for the small airframe.
But it seems to me that the technology was there, a dual stage blower similar to the Packard/Merlin, fuel injection (available on the late model P-26's)get up to say 1500 hp maybe? remove the nose .50's to make room, go to 6 .50's in the wings as on later models. better laid out more efficient oil coolers and radiators and the over all shape of the B model could have been kept, and have had a plane that could tangle on equal terms with Spits and 109's of the time. What do you think?

There was a version of the P40 with a Merlin engine. It couldn't compete with either the Spit or the P47. The airframe required too much modification to "clean" it up aerodynamically. Late in the war Curtiss tried to produce an extensively cleaned up P40, IIRC the P40Q but the P51, late Spitfires and late the P47 M/N out performed it as well.