History Sunday: Secret Allied Aircraft of WWII

Examine plans, rare photos and surviving examples of the classified projects the Allies were working on.
Meet the engineers and designers who conjured up planes that were decades ahead of their times.
See how the wartime plans were incorporated into civilian aviation.
At WWII's outset, U.S. and U.K. military aircraft designs were woefully behind Germany and Japan's technologically superior planes. But the genius and ingenuity of innovators on both sides of the Atlantic closed the gap. For America, it was a handful of visionaries and their teams; for Great Britain, a creative and thoughtful spirit fostered by the top leadership which was evident all the way through the ranks. These are the untold stories of their cutting-edge designs and solutions, some of which were decades ahead of their time.