Drop tanks were used in the Spanish civil war by the condor legion and they worked out quite well. The german's were well aware of how to retrofit planes to carry them. The e-4 even had a center line bomb rack release fitted in the middle of BOB. I have also studied the system used by the german's for their drop tanks. It is quite simple efficient and ingenious. I see no other limiting factor here to the use of a drop tank during bob except that the original drop tank design for the 109 was faulty IMO.
I know plywood/paper materials were used on some p-51 drop tanks due to either wanting to save metal resources or not to give the enemy free useful aluminum metal materials. The german's may have designed them this way originally for just the same reason but came up with a faulty design. Our "paper" drop tanks worked quite well from what I know of them..
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