Lockheed L-133

The Lockheed L-133 was an exotic design begun in 1939 and proposed as the first jet fighter of the United States Army Air Forces in the Second World War. Engineers Kelly Johnson, Willis Hawkins and Hall Hibbard worked on it first as paper projects, and by 1940 Lockheed had started a company-funded jet fighter, with its own axial-flow L-1000 turbojet to power it. The L-133-02-01 was submitted formally on 30 March 1942 as a single-seat canard with a blended wing and body, two engines buried low in the fuselage, the outer wing of the P-38 Lightning and four 20 mm cannon, expected to reach about 985 kilometres per hour. The Army Air Forces thought it too advanced and did not pursue it, but the experience helped Lockheed develop the simpler single-engine P-80 Shooting Star, the first successful American operational jet fighter. The L-133 was never built.