America's First Jet Fighter

Today on Far Future Horizons we present an episode from the acclaimed documentary series Planes that Never Flew- America's First Jet Fighter.

In America's First Jet Fighter, the series examines the Lockheed L-133, the first attempt by an American company to build a jet-powered fighter, begun in 1939 by Lockheed but later cancelled due to lack of interest.

The Lockheed aviation company was the first in the United States to start work on a jet-powered aircraft, the L-133 design started in 1939 as a number of "Paper Projects" by engineers Clarence "Kelly" Johnson, Willis Hawkins and Hall J Hibbard. By 1940 preliminary work on a company financed jet fighter had been started, which progressed to several different versions on the drawing board. In the meantime Lockheed were working on an axial-flow L-1000 turbojet engine of their own design, which was intended to power the culmination of the jet fighter project, the Model L-133-02-01.

Planes that Never Flew is available on DVD from Amazon.co.uk. Planes That Never Flew is a Discovery Channel documentary series about experimental aircraft projects that never flew. Over four one-hour episodes, the series examined the history behind aborted projects to build two jet fighters, a supersonic transport (SST), and a nuclear powered long range bomber.

Planes That Never Flew - America's First Jet Fighter

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