Planes That Never Flew S01E03: America's First Jet Fighter (Lockheed L-133 Starjet)

Developed in 1939 before Pearl Harbor, the Lockheed L-133 "Starjet" was the first fighter aircraft ever powered by turbojets. Had it flown, it would have swept all Nazi opposition from the skies and changed the course of World War II. However, when Lockheed presented the project to the USAAF in 1942, the officials were scared of that unusual blended wing-body canard design and dismissed the plane as "too advanced for the time", preferring a more conventional project instead: the Lockheed P-80 "Shooting Star". But today, the Starjet legacy can still be found in every modern jet fighter.
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Correction to what was asserted in this video made in 2003: the Lockheed L-133 was not designed to be supersonic. Its top speed was 625 mph (985 km/h) i.e. Mach 0.8 to 0.9 depending on the altitude; with a range of 300 miles (~500 km).