Postwar airliners as a prestige and technology race

Was the postwar British-American airliner rivalry mainly a technology race or a numbers race?

It was a technology race shaped by national prestige.

A viewer asks whether the postwar British-American airliner rivalry was chiefly a technology or numbers race. Technology and national prestige were the defining stakes. The short reply shifts attention from how many aircraft were built to what advanced civil aircraft represented for the competing countries. It provides a framing principle for the surrounding Oceanic and Comet discussion rather than a detailed comparison of individual programmes.