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The Luftwaffe had plenty of opportunities to field combat jets by the first year or two of the 40's, but due to a large number of reasons, they dropped the ball until it was too late. As a result, the Allies were spared the potential of a seriously one-sided air-war.
I don't think the debate will ever be "closed" as there's too many factors involved to make the jets of the Luftwaffe an open and closed case.
I find a lot of these threads are based on hindsight.
The Germans didn't know the war will end in 1945 so the introduction of the jets was a logical thing to do.
Had the war gone into 1947 then different ballgame.
This has been debated many times in various other threads, but the misconception that the Me262 was the the first combat jet is not correct. The He280 was the first armed combat jet, ready for production in 1941. Plagued with delays due to jet engines and recieving a yawn from the RLM, it was relegated to the back burner even though it demonstrated that it could easily out perform the Fw190 during trials.
The Me262 prototype was going through testing at that point in time and was still 2 years out as a production-ready machine.
The Luftwaffe had plenty of opportunities to field combat jets by the first year or two of the 40's, but due to a large number of reasons, they dropped the ball until it was too late. As a result, the Allies were spared the potential of a seriously one-sided air-war.
I don't think the debate will ever be "closed" as there's too many factors involved to make the jets of the Luftwaffe an open and closed case.