In Bent Flybjerg's book there is a chapter by Sylvain Lenfle and Christoph Loch (Google both for good solid papers and books on project management) describing how projects were managed in the 1940's. The Manhattan Project, Atlas launch vehicle, Polaris missile and the Apollo program.
The chapter describes how the Manhattan Project and the ICBM development did two crucial things right.
First they installed a dedicated organization to manage the project. A project management team focused on the capabilities needed to accomplish the mission.
The Navy created a Special Program Office (SPO), that had autonomy and authority to manage the Polaris program. SPO's and Program Executive (Executive) Office (PEO) are now standard in DOD acquisition. A dedication to the mission was the basis of the SPO. Our Religion was to build Polaris. - Adm. William F. Raborn, in From Polaris to Trident: The Development of US Fleet Ballistic Missile Technology, Cambridge University Press, 1994.
The second action was the management of uncertainty . Today we use the term management in the presence of uncertainty, since only 1 of the 2 types of uncertainty can be managed. Epistemic uncertainty creates reducible risks that can be managed. Aleatory uncertainty is irreducible. That risk can only be handled with Margin.
At the start of the project, it was understood there are things that were unknown. The key question is are they knowable? For those knowable unknowns General Groves managed the Manhattan project by proceeding in the dark. While it was theoretically known how to build the bomb in the 1950's experimentation was needed to turn that theory into practice.
These projects have behaviours in the same way modern Agile projects do.
But many of the failures of modern agile projects is the failure to start with a defined Capabilities - Capabilities Based Planning that defines what Done looks like in units of Measures of Effectiveness and Measures of Performance.
One of the myths of agile development is we'll discover what Done looks like as we go. This is the best way to spend the customer's money and learn that you're Done when you run out of time and money.