My opinion is that these wonder weapons really didn’t stand a chance – not with 3 million pissed of Russians on the Eastern Front and the almost ready A bomb in the west. Not to mention little things like the round the clock bombing offensive and the British and Americans poised to cross the Rhine. In any case the Horten was not a stealth fighter in any sense of the word – just another in the long succession Knapkinwaffe ideas albeit one that finally made it to the prototype stage, and even then using non-strategic materials such was the parlous state of German strategic resources.
The thing that troubles me is that we seem to forget that the Allies had a series of advanced designs on paper – some of which would see production in the post-war years and others that were quickly rendered obsolete by the rapid advances as the Cold War developed. Also the Allies were gearing their production to designs that had proven performance and strategic value that could be mass produced without the constant disruption of the process either by Nazi mismanagement or the Allied offensive which marred the German effort.
The German axial flow engines were a step too far at the time given the lack of suitable allows for the blades while our sensible approach of first using engines of the centrifugal type allowed us to get reliable jets into production when needed. The rocket propelled designs like the Me-163 were in the end a pipe dream being a menace more to their crews than the enemy, while the Luftwaffe had so denuded its offensive capabilities by sacrificing those to production of defensive fighters they had little with which to prosecute any strategic operations they may have considered. In any case the losses of trained pilots flying endless and futile assaults against the advancing Russian troops pretty much killed off any pilots that were left with the skills to properly use this “new” technology.
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