Here Comes the Jet! Lost Film About the Jet Engine’s Top Secret Origins Found in GE Archives

In 1942, a group of GE engineers working in secret for ten months built America’s first jet engine. Their mission was to win the war, but they ended up shrinking the world. “They called us the Hush-Hush Boys,” says Joseph Sorota, one of the last living veterans of the project, who just turned 95.

A few early attempts at flight featured in Jet Power, a 1952 GE film about the development of the jet engine. GIF credits: The Schenectady Museum of Innovation and Science

The team working on the project had some 1,000 workers, but only about a tenth of them, including Sorota, knew what they were doing. The war effort has become largely forgotten, but a GE historian discovered a 1952 film about the building of the jet engine. Take a look.