To quote Edwin Starr's smash hit "War, What Is It Good for", the answer, in aviation terms at least, speed and lots of it. Military hardware designers finding ways to go faster, WW2 pushing piston engines to ever higher speeds.
However, WW2 also witnessed Frank Whittle's ingenious jet-engine breakthrough, kick-starting a new generation of faster aircraft, and while early jet powered machines were only marginally faster, aircraft designers have never looked back. Britain’s RAF might have been one of the earlier adopters, but across the English Channel, German engineers quickly followed suit with a host of jet-powered military hardware, a fact proven by Messerschmitt, occupying two of the top ten slots.
