About this plane discussion, both the US and USSR first jets were influenced by german designs. I can't say to what extent or if they were just copies, but it is clear that the designs and research materials the germans possesed were clearly a source of inspiration for the allied forces.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-86_Sabre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-15
I speak after having a look at those two links... and both models have a resemblance bewtween themselves, and with the 262. You might also notice that these allied models were first implemented/tested after the war ended, giving a hint of how was their respective research speeded up. Shapes might not resemble the german model in a drastic way, but one can clearly conclude that there was a great influence, even if later changes were introduced.
As for the fleet boats and german boats worse or better, well, each side had its advantages. US people shouldn't go into hard patriotism so quickly as their tin cans weren't able to do deep dives for instance, and torpedoes were duds for a large part until the problem was detected (and not too soon). But kaleun fan boys shouldn't go as far as claiming U-Boote to be invincible, as their sensor technology was crap, based only on passive sonars until very late war, and radars were not precisely top notch.
And replying Soniboy, the only things of interest to the US when capturing that U-Boot were:
- The attack periscope optics and mechanics.
- The enigma machine and code books.