Who was really first ?
good question
As far asI know --the Stealth bomber was influenced by the flying wing brought here from Germany in the 40's
Our first jet engine was a sorry thing derived from Whittle's engine --
If you back to the 1910-20's -there were full flying surfaces - the Fokker (Tony Fokker ,Dutch?) had a flying fin -
so apparantly lots of stuff may have been first done by someone who screwed it up -then later on- someone else picked up th idea and got it all together.
To me , after having worked in US industry -- the one point about US industry is that most companies don't want to be first in or last in ,on something new.
Unless it is a cost plus sponsered project.- then you just pissed away the money as slowly as possible.
It's called CYA-- and I hate it.
I was told many times " oh better cover yourself on that or you could loose your job "- I always felt that if I had to spend time covering my ass - the job wasn't worth having.
I always felt the aircraft innovators of Germany must have felt the same way -
and they probably had a lot more to lose