Second, the key to all of the preceding is “under the right conditions”. Germany had not one of the right conditions at war’s end. They didn’t have enough cobalt or nickle to make jet engines that had a reasonable service life. They were getting 10 hours out of the 004Bs in the ME 262, a problem verified by US testing after the war.

Germany was about out of experienced pilots at war’s end. There’s no way that the Hitler Youth was going to stand up to the experienced Allied pilots even with a decided advantage in aircraft. The finicky nature of the early jet engines could mean the life even of experienced pilots. A hot shot kid would have been fitted for a toe tag before he even got in the cockpit.

Germany had no oil to produce fuel to properly train new pilots, fly enough missions, or even properly test a lot of their aircraft. Their failure to win the war in the middle east and secure a source of oil crippled their war effort.

In the end it’s amazing that the Germans accomplished as much as they did given the horrendous mistakes that they made. A two front war. Getting mired in Russia in winter (apparently they learned nothing from Napoleon). Failure to implement new cutting edge technology until it was to late (sturmguver, etc.) Hitler’s insistence that he maintain complete military control despite knowing much less than his generals, and often waffling when it came to time sensitive decisions. In the end the rise of the reich and its fall happened for exactly the same reasons, and on the back of the same man.

Picking up on your last para., one bit of ironic history is that the F-111 (TFX) was awarded to General Dynamics mainly because it used more proven, existing off-the-shelf technology than did it’s competitor Boeing’s offering which was far more “unproven” hi-tech–and it STILL was a developmental nightmare.

My only nitpick with your scenario is that, while true as it goes, it is not the ONLY alternative possible. Would the US have raced the development of the A-bomb so quickly if we were not at war with Germany? And if we hadn’t, we might have been forced to invade Japan with all the hideous casualties that would have entailed. People forget how war-weary America was towards the end. The sort of cas. the invasion would have produced very well might have shocked the nation to such an extent that it would have had no stomach to wage war aginst Hitler and we might have been forced to seek a modus vivendi with Hitler. And it is almost certain that absent our entry into the war in Europe Hitler would have starved England into surrender with it’s U-boats or at the very least forced them to sue for peace. Thus there would be no England from which to springboard into Europe come later.

Also not to be forgotten is that Japan had fully ONE-HALF (50%) of it’s Army sitting over in China in Manchuria (Manchuko). We would have been tied up a long time subduing that element–especially if the SU fell to Germany as it undoubtedly would have. We would have been tied up in the Far East for quite some time–even more especially if Germany invaded India like Alexander once it had conquered the Mid-East and seized it’s oil and that of the Russian Black Sea fields around Baku, etc, This would have meant a) except for Indonesian fields, we would have been short of oil, and b) we would have been tied up defending China from a German-controlled–if only partially–India for quite some time unless we allowed Germany India uncontested.

The upshot is that while it would have probably been unlikely that Hitler would ever have attacked America directly if absent a declared war, (unless he had the atomic bomb and long-range jet bombers to carry it.) under the scenario described above it might have impossible to even contemplate “freeing” Europe until around 1950–if ever considering the combined inertia of public opinion and the dominance and consolidated military power of Nazi Germany over most of the globe–especially if Hitler mass produced many of the designs seen in Luft 46. in the interim years.

That might make an interesting thread. A severely delayed US intervention vs. Luftwaffe Skunk Works.

On the other hand, the Nazis ignored nukes (and most other advanced projects) because they thought they would win the war with the weapons in hand in 1940. The Allies, on the other hand -while not funding the bleeding edge stuff immediately- ended up funding the Meteor, the Shooting Star, the B-36, and the FJ-1 Fury.

Even ignoring the B-36, let’s envision mid-1940s attacks on Europe via Essex-class carriers featuring Hellcats and Corsairs; perhaps Tigercats and Bearcats. The USAAF ferries B-29s into Great Britain, from which they are escorted to Reich targets by Meteors, Shooting Stars, Mustangs, and day-fighter Black Widows. If D-Day is sufficiently delayed, we might even see FJ-2 Furys from the sea, to supplement the Lockheed P-80. Maybe even F7U Cutlasses.

Even without the atomic bomb, the B-29 (which was designed with ETO experience in mind, and originally expected to fly from Iceland) would have proved a formidable opponent for the Fw-190 and Me-262. Based in nearby Great Britain, the Superfortress would have been a tremendous challenge for the Luftwaffe, considering that it carried nearly four times the bombload of the B-17.

Aside from all that, the Superfort could carry the original Allied atomic bomb, which meant that the Allies could (in theory) vaporize an entire city each month, starting with Berlin.

Also note that I’m not even mentioning the B-32 Dominator.

I will say this: one of the most under-rated advantages the Allies enjoyed were superior power-plant designs. In other words, the Brits and the Amis made better aircraft engines than anyone else in the world; a record which more or less stands today. Germany and Japan developed many state-of-the-art, bleeding-edge designs, but most of them failed because the Axis powers could not produce power engines suitable for said designs. In the same vein, Allied tank designs were arguable inferior to German (and Soviet) designs, but enjoyed success by way of superior engines, transmissions, and suspension.

To put is another way: the Axis came up with more advanced designs, while the Allies put forth more effective designs.

Going full-circle: advanced high-tech is not always the optimum solution, and sometimes effective use of contemporary tech gives far better results than bleeding-edge high-tech.

Like the LCS… {/snerk}

You miss the point. You’re right about the ability of these designs to influence the war as history actually played out. But just because history happened as it did doesn’t mean that’s the ONLY way history could have played out–which was the point of my post up-thread@1:13pm 23 June and AW1Tim @12:25. If we had NOT entered the war against Germany–a very distinct possibility as I and many historians/pol-scientists point out–things could have turned out VERY differently and the Nazis might have had all the time in the world–or at least enough to perfect their designs and get them into mass production.

You’re attacking a straw man–no one here pretends they are anything more than an interesting footnote as history actually unfolded. But the point is, history didn’t HAVE to unfold that way; and seen in such a light these designs provide a cautionary tale besides being great fun to look at and speculate about.

Hard to find much better examples of parallel, independent development. Must have been the time for flying wings. (Well, there were others with similar ideas, such as Westland in Britain, from roughly WW1 on to the present. They’re not easy to get right.)

For one thing, the first “stealth” aircraft in general use was the DH.98 Mosquito. For another, Germany was in no way, shape, or form capable of turning out the Go229/Ho229 in any significant number. The first X model flew in March 1944 as an unpowered glider. Later (from Wiki):

The program was undeterred when the sole Ho IX V2 crashed after an engine caught fire on 18 February 1945 after only two hours of flying time. An order was put in for further prototypes and 20 pre-production aircraft. On 12 March 1945, Ho 229 was included into the Jäger-Notprogramm for accelerated production of inexpensive “wonder weapons.”

That’s Feb/March 1945 guys. The Soviet Union had stomped thru Poland and the West was rolling thru eastern Germany at this point. And people are willing to posit that Germany could still -at this point- debug & manufacture a bleeding-edge fighter design!?

Let’s look at a far more mature platform: the Me-262 Swallow. State of the art jet fighter; first jet-only version flew in July 1942. Top speed of 559 mph; armament four 30mm MK 108 automatic cannon. Note that this flight was a full two years before D-Day. The first jet fighter group was Jagdgeschwader 7, created in late 1944. Even after funneling in the best pilots available, at one point the group lost ten jets in six weeks of training.

After all that, the Allies still defeated the Swallow thru the use of competitive strategies. Quite simply, the RAF and USAAF patrolled German airfields and attacked the 262′s during takeoff and landing. Chuck Yeager’s victory list included a Swallow even though he was flying the “inferior” P-51.

So even with the far more mature development of the Swallow, Germany had no hope of influencing the war. Even if the Ho229 were as stealthy as advertised, virtually all known air-to-air kills at the time were via the Mk I eyeball.

This also ignores the Gloster Meteor and P-80, with the latter showing a top speed (600 mph) higher than the Me-262 and equal to the Ho229.

So -sadly- no, the Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe (very cool companion game to LucasFilm’s Battle of Britain) would not have been influential, must less decisive.