Eagle334,
By the time you get to the mid to late '60s, it's tough to show much influence at all from WWII planes. One of the most impressive fighters of that era, the F-4, owed little to WWII German designs (i.e. no swept wings, different engine technology, all-missile armament at first). I'm not sure the MiG-21 owes much to German WWII research either.
All,
As for the weapon being more important than the plane, I disagree. The key to the B-29 was its long range and advanced technology. Of all the planes at the end of WWII, only it and its Soviet knock-off were truly capable of dropping atomic bombs in enemies' home lands (albeit as a one-way trip). You could put a nuke in a B-25 (maybe, if you could make it fit), but you couldn't go that far with it. With the development of the A-bomb, the B-29's became the ultimate delivery system for a few years.
(As a side note, you could put a nuke on a Skyraider and fly it into the Soviet Union from a carrier -- again, a one-way trip. See: http://www.danford.net/spadguy.htm)
The B-29 paved the way for the B-36, B-47, B-52, B-1, and B-2. Bombers offered a freedom to policy makers that ICBMs and missile subs didn't -- the ability to recall them at the last minute.
This is not to denigrate the German technology developed during WWII, but most of that research, after it got into Allied (including Soviet) hands, had more impact on fighters. Swept wings and jets ended up on bombers too, but, as stated before, the Germans did not have a monopoly on those concepts. German rocket technology, on the other hand, was incredibly influential; the space race and the arms race both used it for a springboard.
Anyway, the main thread after World War II, at least as most citizens in the U.S., Europe, and the Soviet Union saw it, was nuclear weapons being dropped on us. The bombers were the main threat right after the war, and the biggest threat of all was the B-29.
By the way, this is a neat debate.
Regards,