5 Minute Guides to Aircraft: Republic P-47 Thunderbolt

usually a fighter plane Falls the design concept of sleek aerodynamic lines and an emphasis on maneuverability indeed designs like the P-51 Mustang a6m0 and messersmith 109 all follow this design concept then there's the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt which discards it entirely and still is a beloved fighter plane that many flew to great success but how the origins of the P-47 begin in early 1940 when the then U.S Army Air corps wanted a successor to the severski P35 Republic Aviation stepped up and delivered the p-43 Lancer in response which was a respectable inner war fighter with good performance especially so in high altitude due to a belly mounted turbocharger something uncommon of aircraft at the time and somewhat foreshadowing of what was to follow while the Republic was working on the Lancer it was also working on Project ap10 which was a fighter concept powered by The Familiar Allison v1710 engine when the usaac saw this project they liked what they saw and backed it giving it the designation xp-47 the main design lead behind the xb47 was one of aviation's greatest designers Alexander cartvelli a Georgian whom fled from the USSR to America and joined seversky later for public Aviation as an aircraft designer and whom one later lead the designs for the f-84 thunderjet the f-105 Thunder Chief and famously just before his death the A10 Thunderbolt 2. as development of the xb47 continued the usaac concluded after an evaluation that it was inferior as proposed to luftwaffe of Fighters and considered dropping the support Republic were to try and improve the xb47 with the a model but the differences were not significant enough Alexander cardveli then decided to take development in an alternative Direction dropping the idea of the Allison engine and enlargening the fighter considerably to fit self-sealing fuel tanks and a monstrous Pratt and Whitney r2800 double wasp which was the same engine that powered the F4U Corsair prototype this design would go on to become xb47b and immediately garnered usaac support leading to the xb47a being canned while the design was now certainly better and more appealing to the US aac's needs it was also obscenely heavy just weighing shy of ten thousand pounds empty this caused corvelli to quip that it will be a dinosaur but it will be a dinosaur with good proportions the First Flight of the new plane would occur on May the 6th of 1941 and achieved 412 miles per hour at 25 000 feet and managed at 15 000 feet climb from sea level in just five minutes this astounding high altitude performance was courtesy of the P-47 signature trait and necessity for its weight in size a single massive turbocharger in the rear of the aircraft that used exhaust gases from the engine to power it producing both a small jet effect and helping the engine cope with higher altitudes while introduced to the now newly named US Army Air Force in late 1941 it would take until the end of 1942 for p-47s to see combat over Europe early combat with the p-47s quickly revealed that it was exceptionally durable capable of standing immense amounts of damage and continuing to fly coupled with its immense weight giving it incredible dive performance and its strong construction along for impressive top speeds boom and zoom became a primary tactic of the Thunderbolt which was aided in its ability to often maintain an altitude advantage over its opponent thanks to its turbocharger and Powerful engine another unintended benefit of the P-47 size and carrying capacity was its ability to mount large amounts of suspended Ordnance in the form of rockets and bombs letting it fill nicely into a fighter bomber roll and perform colorless air support and ground attack missions however not everything was perfect for the Thunderbolt for while it was great in straight lines turning the P-47 was a struggle meaning lighter Fighters could beat it in a rate fight it also early on at least had problems with range as the engine was notoriously hungry this problem was more so an issue when the P-47 was used as an escort fighter over Europe when the Eighth Air Force was doing its massive bombing campaign and would also be part of the reason why many escort duties would later be fulfilled by the P-51 Mustang outside of escort duties however in combat Air Patrol armed Recon and close air support the P-47 established a respectable 4-1 kill loss ratio with many Pilots managing to bring heavily damaged Thunderbolts home thanks to its insane durability the most notable pilot of the P-47 would be Lieutenant Colonel Francis escabrese whom scored 28 kills in this Thunderbolt while leading the 56 Fighter Group and later became an ace again in the Korean War speaking of the Korean War it would not be sent over to serve like the P-51 as it was deemed two out of date to be effective and most p-47s by this time were in foreign hands such as Peru and even Israel ironically however many Pilots claimed that the P-47 would have performed better in Korea than the P-51 due to its durability and raw power today out of the 15 and a half thousand Thunderbolts built there exists a good number of airworthy thunderbolts and More in static displays around the world it however would not see much use in the civilian side of life like the P-51 nor would it star in many movies like The Spitfire indeed the thunderbolt's life was fairly quiet after the war though the name of Thunderbolt would be reused in the A-10 many years down the line and would continue the small tradition of occasionally reusing names from famous aircraft for new planes a practice that continues to this very day with the latest example being the F-35 lightning II named so after ironically the next plane to be covered the P-38 Lightning

Channel: The Aerodrome

Views: 5,497

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Id: BZqzd7dGhg0

Length: 5min 38sec (338 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 18 2023