I did mean jets and the Germans were way ahead. I know that the british and tested jet flight with a prototype but the germans had several different models in production - I think that was way ahead.
Yeah.
Now let's look at the facts.
Britain produced a working jet engine while Germany was still only making separately (i.e. externally)-powered turbines.
Germany did get a jet fighter into action - but it was with expert pilots in an
experimental unit (i.e. desperation).
Britain put the Meteor jet fighter into regular squadron service before Germany.
German squadron service was after Britain.
The jets that Germany
did manage to get into the air had an engine life (between complete strip-down and rebuild) of around 15 hours (and they also had to be carefully nursed when in flight).
(One reason why the Meteor wasn't used over Germany in the closing stages of the war - apart from lack any actual need - was that, had one gone down into enemy territory it may have provided the Germans with data they didn't have that could have improved their own engines).
Britain and the US had jets ready to come into production/ service: P-80 [did see operational service] and Vampire. The point is: they weren't needed [sup]1[/sup], hence they weren't given any priority.
Oh yeah, let's also add the fact that German jet engines, for a given engine weight, used more fuel (per pound of thrust) and produced less thrust. Or, conversely, for a given thrust the engine weighed more (and STILL used more fuel).
As for rockets the scientific work that was done on rockets (even thought the basis was from Robert Goddart) that was very far ahead of the science that on rocketry that the allies had. Heck our early experiments with rocketry was using Von Braun and captured V2 rockets. Comparing scientific knowledge to language skills is a poor analogy.
Nope.
The comparison is apt.
Eskimos "lag" behind Germans in speaking German because, simply, they don't need to do so.
Similarly, Germany was "ahead" on rocketry because the Allies didn't bother putting any effort into such things. Yeah, we used a large number of, for example, 3 inch rockets for bombardment or aircraft weapons, but we didn't bother with V-1 and V-2 type weapons because they were irrelevant to our aims. The entire V-2 programme cost roughly the same as the Manhattan Project and gave
very little return for that cost. It drained money out the German economy to, essentially, no effect except for a psychological one [sup]2[/sup].
How can you be "ahead" if there isn't race?
I admit that Germany had "superiority" in the design and manufacture - hence Paperclip and lots of German-accented "American citizens" post-war - but what they did produce was certainly nothing out of reach of the Allies, as shown the fact that R. V. Jones and a handful of other guys managed to work the specifications and performance of the V-2 from little more than a couple of photographs and a warning letter
before the first one was used. This, to me, suggests that whatever was incorporated in the V-2 was well within the scientific AND technological grasp of the Allies because at no stage did anyone say "How the f*ck do they do that?".
PS welcome back you old curmudgeon!
Thanks.
1 The much-vaunted Me 262 did cause a rise in bomber losses (but it was a sustainable rise) and no difference in fighter-fighter exchange rates according to USAF records.
2 "The cost of the development and manufacture of the V-2 was staggering, estimated by a post-war US study as about $2 billion, or about the same amount as was spent on the Allied atomic bomb program. Yet the entire seven-month V-2 missile campaign delivered less high explosive on all the targeted cities than a single large RAF raid on Germany. While such a massive expenditure might have been justified if it had had a military impact, the V-2 accomplished nothing of significant military value." -
V-2 Ballistic Missile 1942-52, Osprey Publishing.
