While almost no one involved in UK aviation management and strategic decision making can claim much credit the truth is surely that by the end of W2 the Americans were so much further ahead than us, except in Jet engines which was surely just matter of time that we had no real prospects of catching up because the airframe technology and mass production engineering skills were all in the USA, we were still including wood and fabric and tail wheels while US was all metal tricycle gear and long ranges and ruggedness necessary in their domestic market which far far better replicates a global market than any thing anyone in UK could conceive of.
i dont mean this as a criticism but just the outcome of WW2 and our small size as a country and actually we did some remarkable things Comet and Viscount and Hunter but big usually trumps better and when better is limited to a small proportion of output well theres only one outcome