This GE production from 1952 details how the first American jet engine came to be during the summer of 1942. Based off Frank Whittle’s drawings, GE was commissioned to rebuild and commercialize the Whittle jet engine by the U.S. War Department and Army Air Corps. Called the I-A, GE’s top-secret engine would later send the XP-59, the United States’ first jet, into the air for the first time on Oct. 2, 1942.