1 Lockheed L-133 Starjet

The end of World War II was the dawn of the fighter jet. The German Messerschmitt Me-262 entered military service in 1944, while the first American fighter jet used by the United States Army Air Forces (the predecessor to the U.S. Air Force) was the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, introduced the next year. It turns out, however, that the United States had been working on a design for a jet-powered fighter six years earlier, before the Japanese even attacked Pearl Harbor.

It was called the Lockheed L-133 Starjet. The L-133 design outlined a fighter powered by two Lockheed L-1000 turbojets that would make use of a canard design (see the small forewings) to assist with lift. The Army Air Forces rejected the proposal in 1942, and Lockheed instead developed the simpler and more practical P-80.