I never said the Meteor did play a huge role. My point is that there is a reason history does not portray these other aircraft as popular. If they were used more, why are they not heard of in everyday use when we talk of WWII?
Because Italy;
1) Did not win the war. History is decided by the victors.
2) Italy played a smaller part in the European war than Germany. Their biggest contribution was in the Mediterranean theater, which the United States did not play a large role in- see #1.
As an American, you, at least I am exposed to 8 fighter aircraft by the media (History channel, Discovery Channel, and Military Channel)
1)The P51 Mustang; this was the awesomest aircraft of the war! It was so uber mustang pilots could shoot down German pilots in their sleep! lol! It was critical to winning the air war in Germany, even though the Thunderbolt
actually played a larger role in this! (in reality, something like 4000 kills were amassed by mustang pilots in Europe, which is 1/3 of the total kills of
Jagdgescwhader 52).
2)The P47 Thunderbolt; this fighter was frikken sweet! It was super fast and indestructible! It somehow climbed better than the 109 just because of a new propeller even though the 109 was about half the weight with more engine power! It was magic! And, it was the heaviest armed fighter of the war!(?!)
3)The F6F Hellcat; super l33t! It was
totally able to out maneuver the Zero despite being twice as heavy!
4)The F4U Corsair; See Hellcat!
5)The Me.109; total suckage. Despite the fact that in reality it's later versions were lighter and faster than the Mustang, the poor skill of the pilots at the end of the war and their inability to push the 109 to it's limits must mean that the aircraft sucks.
6)The Fw.190; better than the 109, but still sucked! Despite having 4 20mm cannons and 2 .50 cals, or sometimes 2 30mm cannons and 2 20mm's, it still had a lighter armament than the Thunderbolt!(!?!?!)
7)The Zero; this aircraft is so rarely referred to by it's military designation (A6M) that we sometimes have people come in saying we don't have it! Not that we
should have it anyway, they should have spent the time they spent modeling the Zero modeling more uber leet American planes like the P61 and the B29 and the P80 and the...........! This thing totally sucked! It was super slow (despite being faster than the F4F) and blew up if you sneezed at it!
8)The Me.262; despite being the first operational jet fighter in the world and the only in WWII to see combat against manned enemy combat aircraft in the air, being the fastest and one of the most heavily armed interceptors of the war, it was still less leet than the P51 and the P47's 8 .50 cals were still more powerful than it's 4 30mm autocannons!(!?!) lol!
Don't try to deny it either; this, almost always, is what American history documentaries tell you. Occasionally you'll hear of the the Spitfire, the Hurricane, the P38 and the F4F but far less commonly than these 8 aircraft (coupled with their almost unanimous description as above). It's extremely unrealistic to expect anyone to know of Italian, Russian, French, Romanian, Japanese, and many British aircraft without doing something silly and time consuming like reading a book or even doing light research on the internet.
WOOT! 2-4 50 cals. 
I'M IN!
Guess what armament your P38 has once you've expended all the ammunition in the Hispano
