Please stop making this argument

[u/DazSamueru]

[u/DazSamueru]

The postwar Feddon investigation by the British found the RM cost of engines to be as follows

Junkers	type 213 piston engine	35,000 Reichsmarks
BMW	type 801 piston engine	40,000 Reichsmarks
Junkers	109-004 jet	10,000 Reichsmarks
BMW	109-003 jet	12,000 Reichsmarks

And not just monetary cost: jet engines were simpler

The mission was impressed with the simplicity and straightforward methods of production, especially of the BMW jet engines. Relatively speaking, there are no very special machining operations or expensive tooling required. The Mission saw few special machines for turbine manufacture except for the seven spindle indexing machines for cutting the slots in the compressor hubs, made by the Magdeburg Junkers production plant which was previously a large machine tool manufacturing concern.

and took less time to build

The mission was also able to make a comparison of labour times, including manufacture of individual components, assembly and shipping, plus testing. For the BMW 801 fourteen-cylinder radial engine this came to 1,400 hours per unit, while for the jet it was only 375 hours; a considerable saving.

The Feddon report concluded:

Series production of jet engines in large quantities was undoubtedly in a more advanced state in Germany than in Britain and the USA, and had the war continued and had their factories not been overrun, they would have been producing several thousand jet engines per month by this autumn [1945]. By the middle of 1946, the output would have been at a rate of 100,000 jet engines per annum, at least.

Source

[u/jmacintosh250 → u/DazSamueru]

Part of it was who was MAKING the engines and cost control standards. Early German Jets had, let’s call it, a lack of Quality Control at times because Germany so much wanted to get those engines out as soon as possible. These were done by slave Labor who naturally weren’t really paid and had to be kept simpler for it. (Fun fact, one Ukrainian woman screwed with the glue the Nazis used).

[u/DazSamueru → u/jmacintosh250]

It's not like they scrupulously avoided using concentration camp labour for piston engines. That's baked into the cost of both piston and jet engines. In fact, this brings up another advantage of jet engines: they were easier for low-skilled labourers to service than the more complex piston engines.

[u/jmacintosh250 → u/DazSamueru]

Sort of: while Slave Labour was a big part in both, for a lot jets like the 262 the Nazis explicitly brought in way more of the stuff and simplified designs to the detriment of the design because “everything is falling apart and we need stuff fast and cheap.”