but as for the Triumph and Tragedy? tough one with the Komet, Triumph in the advance in technology perhaps and well the tragedy's obvious, the fact it kinda sucked....
failing that, in an effort to get a stronger single aircraft triumph/tragedy how about an aircraft that perhaps wasn't very good on one front, but was fantastic on annother, struggling to think of examples off my head but for example the Buffalo perhaps, not so great for the americans but the Finns used them very well, and using an aircraft used by annother nation will also teach them about the other nation's role in the war, i'm sure there are far better examples of non US (the reason i'm trying to find non-US examples is because it might be more interesting for Americans to hear about foreign aircraft they might know little about) aircraft used by many nations, one of which flunked with them, the other very successful, just a case of looking harder than me to think of one