alternatehistory.com

In 1910, Romanian inventor Henri Coandă demonstrated an early jet aircraft, which worked, but crashed, due to the pilot, Coandă himself, being unprepared for the power of the engine.

During the machine's short flight, Coandă was able to observe that the burning gases from the engine seemed to hug the sides of the aircraft very closely and this is what seemed to cause the fire. He (and other scientists) spent many years researching this effect, which is now known as the Coandă effect in his honour.

Coandă did not pursue this line of development of the jet engine.

Suppose that he had. Suppose that, after about two years of work, he built a new motorjet aeroplane, with the exhaust in the rear of the vehicle (to reduce the chance of the aircraft catching fire). With the pilot/inventor better prepared for the engine's power, the Coandă-1912 doesn't crash, and the jet age takes off before WWI... well, maybe.

Could the motorjet become a practical means of powering, for example, a WWI Scout/Fighter plane?

Could Cunnell and von Richthofen have flown primitive jets against eachother, or would the world still have needed to wait for the turbojet, before jets became more than a curiousity? If the latter, would turbojets have been developed earlier than in OTL?
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