The whole reason the Nazis wanted to steal the Cirrus X-3 prototype was revealed in a chilling animated short featured in The Rocketeer.
Though there is another small silver lining in this scenario: Mr. Hughes might not have burned his original blueprints to the Cirrus X-3, and would have lent a hand to keep the United States competitive by refining and mass producing his own unit.
With Howard Hughes (Terry O’Quinn) basically doing the hard work for Nazi Germany’s scientists and delivering a workable model for proper rocket travel, it wouldn’t have taken long to refine and mass produce The Rocketeer’s central MacGuffin.
Continental Europe and the United States would have been under attack by Adolf Hitler’s rocket corps, which could have led to not only a more devastating loss of life, but also an earlier entry into the war by US forces.