{"id":23270276,"date":"2026-09-18T15:40:36","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T13:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/lockheed-l-133-first-american-jet-fighter-1942\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T15:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T13:41:09","slug":"lockheed-l-133-first-american-jet-fighter-1942","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/it\/lockheed-l-133-first-american-jet-fighter-1942\/","title":{"rendered":"Lockheed L-133: America\u2019s First Jet Fighter, Never Built"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>In March 1942, while the United States was still flying propeller fighters and would be for the rest of the war, Lockheed handed the Army Air Forces a proposal for a twin-engined jet with a canard foreplane, a blended wing and body, and a predicted top speed of 612 mph.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The Army looked at it and said no. Not because it was bad. Because it was too advanced.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f5f6f8;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:18px 22px;margin:24px 0\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:700;font-size:17px;color:#0d1117\">Quick Facts<\/p><table style=\"width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;font-size:15px\"><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Designation<\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#0d1117;vertical-align:top\">Lockheed L-133-02-01<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Designers<\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#0d1117;vertical-align:top\">Clarence &ldquo;Kelly&rdquo; Johnson, Willis Hawkins and Hall Hibbard<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Work began<\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#0d1117;vertical-align:top\">1939, as company-funded paper projects<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Submitted<\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#0d1117;vertical-align:top\">30 March 1942, to the US Army Air Forces<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Engines<\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#0d1117;vertical-align:top\">Two Lockheed L-1000 axial-flow turbojets, 5,100 lbf each<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Layout<\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#0d1117;vertical-align:top\">Canard foreplane, blended wing-body, slotted flaps<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Predicted speed<\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#0d1117;vertical-align:top\">612 mph (985 km\/h) in level flight<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Range<\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#0d1117;vertical-align:top\">Only 310 miles (500 km)<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Armament<\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#0d1117;vertical-align:top\">Four 20 mm cannon in the nose<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Built<\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#0d1117;vertical-align:top\">None. The design never left paper<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">America\u2019s first jet was a Lockheed, and it was a drawing<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Lockheed was the first American company to start work on a jet aircraft. In 1939 Johnson, Hawkins and Hibbard began a series of paper projects; by 1940 the company was funding preliminary work on a jet fighter itself, without a contract.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>They were also building their own engine. The L-1000 was an axial-flow turbojet of Lockheed\u2019s own design, which mattered enormously, because axial flow is the architecture every modern jet engine still uses. Britain\u2019s Whittle engines and the American derivatives that followed were centrifugal: simpler, fatter, and a dead end for high performance.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/lockheed-l-1000-turbojet-planes-of-fame.jpg\" alt=\"Lockheed L-1000 axial-flow turbojet on museum display\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">The Lockheed L-1000, the engine the L-133 was designed around. Axial flow in 1940, when the competition was centrifugal. Photo: Sturmvogel 66 \/ Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The shape was sixty years early<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Look at the configuration and count how many ideas arrived decades later. A canard foreplane, which the West would not put on a production fighter until the Viggen in the 1970s. A blended wing-body, which is how the F-16 and everything after it manages lift and volume. Two engines buried in a low-drag integral fuselage, which is the Me 262\u2019s opposite and the F-22\u2019s ancestor.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>There was one very practical piece of conservatism in there. The main wing was essentially the outer wing panels of the <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/aircraft\/p-38-lightning\/\">P-38 Lightning<\/a>, an aerofoil Lockheed already understood and had tooling for.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sVFe85p3Ko4\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:-10px;font-style:italic\">The <em>Planes That Never Flew<\/em> episode on the L-133, cited by Wikipedia as a source on the design.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Why the Army said no<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The USAAF judged the L-133 too advanced to pursue, and from a 1942 standpoint that was not cowardice. Two unproven engines of a new architecture, a layout nobody had flown, and a fighter with a combat radius so short that 310 miles was the <em>total<\/em> range. In a war being fought across oceans, that last number is close to disqualifying on its own.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The consequences ran in two directions. Lockheed\u2019s design experience fed straight into the <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/aircraft\/p-80-shooting-star\/\">P-80 Shooting Star<\/a>, America\u2019s first operational jet fighter. But because the L-133 was not approved, the L-1000 engine lost its reason to exist and its development stalled in long pauses.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/lockheed-p-80-shooting-star-ft-490.jpg\" alt=\"Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star in US Air Force markings\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">The P-80 Shooting Star: conventional wing, conventional tail, one British-derived centrifugal engine. Deliberately less ambitious than the L-133, and therefore actually built. Photo: Clemens Vasters \/ Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<p>So when the P-80 needed a powerplant, the quickest answer was the Allison J33, derived from British centrifugal practice. America\u2019s first operational jet fighter flew on an engine architecture its own industry had already moved beyond on paper four years earlier.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The cost of being right too early<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>It is easy to write the L-133 as a tragedy of official timidity. The more interesting reading is that both sides were correct. Lockheed was right about where jet aircraft were going. The Army was right that a wartime air force cannot bet on two unproven technologies at once and a fighter that runs out of fuel in 310 miles.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>What the episode really cost was the engine. An American axial-flow turbojet programme, running from 1940 with a customer behind it, would have changed the shape of the early jet age. Instead the L-1000 drifted, and the United States spent the next decade catching up on an architecture it had thought of first.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The L-133 was never built, never flown, and never given a serial number. Two desktop models in a display case at Chino are most of what physically survives of the first American jet fighter.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><em>Sources: Ren&eacute; J. Francillon, <\/em>Lockheed Aircraft since 1913<em> (Putnam, 1982); Bill Norton, <\/em>U.S. Experimental &amp; Prototype Aircraft Projects: Fighters 1939&ndash;1945<em> (Specialty Press, 2008); Planes of Fame Museum. Note: published figures for the predicted top speed vary between 612 and 625 mph; 612 mph is the figure consistent with the quoted 985 km\/h.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<style>.mfq{margin:34px 0 8px}.mfq h2{font:26px\/1.3 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117;padding-top:22px;margin:0 0 6px}.mfq .qa details{border-top:1px solid #5C91FF;margin:0;padding:0}.mfq .qa details:last-of-type{border-bottom:1px solid #e2e7ee}.mfq .qa summary{cursor:pointer;list-style:none;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:16px;padding:22px 26px;font:18px\/1.7 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117}.mfq .qa summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mfq .qa summary::after{content:\"+\";font:24px Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#3568e0;flex:0 0 auto}.mfq .qa details[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mfq .qa details:hover summary{color:#3568e0}.mfq .qa .a{font:16px\/1.7 \"Gilroy regular\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#454e5e;padding:0 26px 24px}.mfq .qa .a a{color:#3568e0}@media(max-width:680px){.mfq .qa summary{padding:18px 14px;font-size:17px}.mfq .qa .a{padding:0 14px 20px}}<\/style>\r\n\r\n\r\n<section class=\"mfq\"><h2>Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2><div class=\"qa\"><details open><summary>What was the Lockheed L-133?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The L-133 was a jet fighter Lockheed designed between 1939 and 1942, intended to be the first jet fighter of the US Army Air Forces. It featured a canard foreplane, a blended wing-body and two Lockheed L-1000 axial-flow turbojets. It was never built.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Who designed the Lockheed L-133?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">It began in 1939 as a series of company paper projects by Clarence \u201cKelly\u201d Johnson, Willis M. Hawkins and Hall L. Hibbard. Johnson went on to lead Lockheed\u2019s Skunk Works and design the U-2 and SR-71.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How fast would the Lockheed L-133 have been?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Lockheed predicted 612 mph (985 km\/h) in level flight from two L-1000 turbojets of 5,100 lbf each. That is subsonic, roughly Mach 0.8, but far faster than any piston fighter of 1942. Some published sources quote 625 mph.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Why was the Lockheed L-133 never built?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The USAAF considered it too advanced for the time and declined to pursue it in 1942. The design combined two unproven axial-flow engines with an untried canard and blended-body layout, and offered a total range of only 310 miles.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What was the Lockheed L-1000 engine?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The L-1000 was an axial-flow turbojet designed by Lockheed itself, intended to power the L-133. Axial flow is the architecture used by all modern jet engines, unlike the centrifugal designs then being developed in Britain. Without the L-133, its development stalled.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What did the Lockheed L-133 lead to?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The design experience fed directly into the P-80 Shooting Star, America\u2019s first operational jet fighter. The P-80 was deliberately far more conservative, with a conventional wing and tail and a single Allison J33 engine derived from British centrifugal designs.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Does anything of the Lockheed L-133 survive?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">No aircraft was ever built. Display models of the design are held at the Planes of Fame Museum in Chino, California, alongside a surviving example of the Lockheed L-1000 turbojet engine it was designed around.<\/div><\/details><\/div><\/section>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@type\":\"FAQPage\",\"mainEntity\":[{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What was the Lockheed L-133?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"The L-133 was a jet fighter Lockheed designed between 1939 and 1942, intended to be the first jet fighter of the US Army Air Forces. It featured a canard foreplane, a blended wing-body and two Lockheed L-1000 axial-flow turbojets. 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Display models of the design are held at the Planes of Fame Museum in Chino, California, alongside a surviving example of the Lockheed L-1000 turbojet engine it was designed around.\"}}]}<\/script><div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/horten-ho-229-flying-wing-stealth-myth\/\">Hitler\u2019s Flying Wing and the Stealth Myth<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/miles-m52-britain-supersonic-jet-cancelled-1946\/\">Miles M.52: The Supersonic Jet Britain Cancelled<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/northrop-yb-49-flying-wing-b2-spirit\/\">The Northrop YB-49: The Flying Wing That Died So the B-2 Could Live<\/a><\/p><\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1942 Lockheed offered the USAAF a canard, blended-body twin jet predicted at 612 mph. The Army called it too advanced and built the P-80 instead.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":23269276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23270276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-and-legends","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Lockheed L-133: America\u2019s First Jet Fighter | MiGFlug<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In 1942 Lockheed proposed a canard, blended-body twin jet predicted at 612 mph. The USAAF called it too advanced. 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