I think i kind of agree with Icefire. The pony was not the best fighter of WWII. Neither was any other aircraft. There is no hands down best all around fighter, no such thing. What do exist are best planes for a specific job under certain circumstances. The pony was one of that aircraft, coming to light under favorable circumstances.
What the pony was, was a fighter for a specific job that came at the right time to make a significant impact on the war effort, because they just happened to badly need a plane to do that job at that time. People recognized that, history was initially written by the victors, being a very good looking, sleek aircraft didn't hurt publicity-wise and that's how the exaggerated all-around superiority myth was built...a bit of a dramatic, sensationalist voiceover on a newsreel here, a bit of a triumphant flypast sequence there and people will be impressed. As the years go by and the star status of the plane builds upon itself, there are bound to be people who genuinely believe that it single-handedly won the war.
If P47s had the range to fly to Berlin i'm willing to bet that the Jug, no matter if people think it's ugly, would be the plane that held superstar status. Harder hitting, comparable performance, much more durable.
In a similar fashion, it also has a lot to do with the opposition. If Me262s had been produced in numbers and the luftwaffe was able to retain a core of experienced veterans to fly them, things would be different as well.
All in all, if the performance gap is not too big pilots will tend to prefer the aircraft that has better armament, is more reliable and can take more punishment...it's the cold, hard math of survival and nothing more. The only reason to go for a lighter armed and lesser protected airframe is if it makes you totally untouchable by the opposition.
In the pony's case the biggest performance gain was range, which is something that would be mostly appreciated by the planners at HQ than the pilots actually flying a 6-8 hour sortie. In fact, there were some squads in the ETO (i think it was actually an entire group) that fought tooth and nail to keep flying the P47 until the end of the war and not convert to the Mustang. If memory serves me right, that would be the 56th (Zemke's wolfpack) and they actually got their wish granted.
Of course i'm not slagging the plane off but on the other hand its exploits have surely been greatly exaggerated over the years, considering that a single piece of shrapnel could leave you as a pony pilot frantically drawing up a course for neutral Switzerland, when P47s routinely returned with vertical stabs bearing holes half their size, telephone wires snagged on their wingtips and entire cylinders blown off the engine, in some cases by flying through their own bomb's shrapnel.
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