In the last months of World War Ⅱ, Allied bombers were jumped by German interceptors that had no porpellers but could outrun any conventional lighter. In the Pacific, the Japanese sent piloted glide bombs against ships and aircraft, their suicide dives boosted by rocket or turbojet engines. The Axis was losing the war but was still able to inflict damage. These desperation weapons arrived too late to have any substantial impact on the outcome of the war, hut they foreshadowed a postwar transformation in military technology as dramatic in its wav as the invention of the flying machine it- self. Within a decade, the propeller-driven fighters of the major powers would become virtually obsolete, their successors powered by "reaction engines."
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