Most of us who are history buffs THOUGHT we knew that Germany of WW2 had invented the jet engine. How wrong we were. It was actually Frank Whittle of the Royal Air Force who invented the jet engine. AND he did so BEFORE WW2 even started. Back in those days, there was, of course, no reason why patents should be kept secret and the German's obtained copies of Frank Whittles patent. The Germans pushed ahead with development and produced the ME-262, the 1st combat jet. Meanwhile, in Great Britain , the powers that be, ignored the jet engine and believed the jet would never get off the ground. The ME-262, far and away the fastest plane, could have been a war winner for the German's, BUT Hitler interfered and demanded that the ME-262 be a bomber and NOT a fighter plane. If Hitler had not interfered, the ME-262 , built exclusively as a fighter jet, it may well have kept allied bombers out of German air space. To see the entire story , view Youtube's "The Genius of the Jet: The Invention of the Jet Engine"
Interesting. My uncle was a Spitfire pilot, and survived the war. Perhaps I owe Adolf a bit of gratitude. Here is that video:
What the U.S. had going for it in WWII was that it could out produce the enemy. It was quantity over quality in some cases like planes and tanks. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/sites/default/files/2017-07/mv-education-package.pdf
Yes, it is true that the Germans were known for quality, over quantity, especially the Tiger tank. In my opinion, they would have been much better off mass producing 3 or 4 of a lesser quality tank like the Russian T-34. Moreover, in actual combat, the Tiger lasted, on average only a week or so before it needed to be pulled off the line for maintenance. The same is true for the German ME-262. Believe it or not, the engines had a life of only 25 flying hours before they had to be scrapped and replaced. That was because the Germans had run out of elements such as tungsten which could withstand high temps.
It is amazing that we progressed from the Wright Brothers 1st powered flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903 to breaking the sound barrier in 1949. During the early 1930's, we had early rockets that could barely get off the ground and rise only a few dozen yards. BUT, by 1957 the USSR had put an artificial satelite in orbit around the earth and only 12 years later, the U.S. had landed a man on the moon. We are now in a new era and within the lifetimes of our youngest members of Senior Forums, we will be landing people on Mars. Not long after that, we will be setting up permanently manned colonies on Mars. I have no idea how it will come about , BUT we will discover a way to travel from the moon to Mars , NOT IN MONTHS, but in a week or two.