Evidence has been posted supporting the idea that the F86 was influenced in its design by the P51. If it wasn't for the P51, the Sabre would never have been the plane that it was.
The Mustang is a great high-speed aircraft, the Me262 isn't. It's silly to think that North American wouldn't apply any lessons they learned with the P51 to their development of the Sabre.
With that being said, I could be completely wrong. Unless someone can prove it, though...
The Me 262 wasn't a great high speed aircraft? It was revolutionary, its wing design is basically what allowed jets to travel at high speeds and eventually break the sound barrier. The Fury showed that laminar wings for jets was inefficient so North American used captured German technology on swept wings. IIRC, the only thing that the F-86 incorporated in its design that was from the Mustang were the speed breaks on the wings which was the same system used on the A-36 Apache/Invader.
The tail system on the F-86 was, if IIRC, was the same or influenced by the one used on the Fury (which design was influenced on the Mustang) but that was also inefficient and was replaced by "all flying-tail" on the E model which was far more efficient than the original tail designed for the Sabre.
Saying that the Sabre was an evolution of the Mustang would be like saying that the F-14 Tomcat was an evolution of the F-111 because it used an improved swing wing system based on the one used by the Aardvark.
The fact is that the early jets made after WW2 owed their design more to captured German designs and technology than any other factor.
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