greetings this is Greg I want to talk about the p47 Thunderbolts operations in the Pacific Theater during World War II I'm going to put quite a bit of focus on drop tanks and range without the right drop tank the Thunderbolt could not have been a meaningful participant in the Pacific Theater thus it's a big part of the story in December of 1941 when the Japanese invaded the Philippines 14 USB 17s escaped and flew to Australia as these were the only aircraft of the Far Eastern air forces to escape that made Australia the location of the headquarters of the Far Eastern Air Forces which were then reorganized into the US Fifth Air Force in February of 1942 The Fifth Air Force needed a leader and general Douglas MacArthur was given a choice of two generals one was General Jimmy dittle the other was General George Kenny when I first heard that I thought how could anyone not choose Jimmy dittle he was at this time one of the most famous pilots in the world he was a famous air race pilot had just led the doitt raid he was a huge part of the development of high octane fuels he pioneered instrument flying I mean he's Jimmy D little yet MacArthur chose George Kenny I can't claim to know for sure what he was thinking but I think I get it hear me out on this General MacArthur was generally quite critical of the Army Air Force he thought they over promised and underd delivered General Kenny was sort of an outcast in the Army Air Force now he was an accomplished pilot he flew in the first world war he and his Gunner even had two air-to-air kills flying the salson 282 which is a biplane it sort of looks like a giant spad 13 but it's powered by of all things a liquid cooled radial engine why build a liquid cooled radial you're combining almost all the drawbacks of an air cooled radial with almost all of the drawbacks of a liquid cooled engine anyway back to our story Kenny was also highly involved in training fighter pilots to fly the P38 Lightning so he was very familiar with that airplane and was absolutely an expert on its capabilities however I don't think he was chosen by MacArthur for his Aviation background you see Kenny had run a fowl of the bomber Mafia on a number of occasions this resulted in his transfer to an infantry school where he taught infantry tactics remember the usaaf was still a part of the army General Kenny was also involved in studies and wrote reports During the interwar period for war plan orange which dealt with tactics and strategies the US should use in the event of a war with Japan I think Kenny was chosen not because of his Aviation background but because of his time teaching infantry tactics and working on war plan orange that said General Kenny was a very competent Aviator and technically knowledgeable that would matter when he was given orders in July of 1942 to take command of the fth Air Force Kenny needed fighter planes he wanted P38 Lightnings we're up to about March of 1943 at this point the problem was that every theater Commander wanted P38 Lightnings at this point the P38 was thought of as America's Premier fighter plane and everything else was just sort of an also ran there just weren't enough of these things to go around so General Kenny accepted that one of his fighter groups would have to be equipped with p47 Thunderbolts which in his words quote nobody else wanted unquote those p-47s arrived in Brisbane Australia on June 20th of 1943 with the commander for the new p47 Fighter Group a lieutenant colonel Neil Kirby the planes came partially disassembled they towed the planes to a place called Eagle farms near Brisbane for final assembly and preparation all of this is documented by the way in general Kenny's book General Kenny reports first published in 1949 so it's out of copyright and thus can be found in my patreon section in PDF form it's 594 pages of amazing Pacific Theater information back to our story General Kenny went out to Eagle Farms to see his brand new Thunderbolts and discovered they had not been shipped with drop tanks this was a big problem these Thunderbolts with 305 gallons of internal fuel the normal amount of the time with no drop tanks just didn't have enough range to be used in the Pacific theater in fact without drop tanks just getting them from Brisbane to their base in New Guinea was going to be a huge problem now Republic had designed three drop tanks for the p47 a pair of 200g Tanks one being made out of metal and one of compressed paper and a 650 gallon tank the 200g metal tank and the 650 are mentioned in this document as far as I know the 650 was never built but the pair of 200g Tanks definitely were unfortunately the 200-g metal tank was not ordered in any quantity the paper tank which wasn't that great was ordered in small numbers so few in fact that even though they were not that good The usaaf Still ran out of them when I say it wasn't that good I mean it's still a lot better than no drop tank at all this was a whole bomber Mafia debacle and I want to stay on track so I'm going to talk about the Republic tanks another time of course Republic built the planes with racks to carry these drop tanks starting with the first truly combat ready model the C2 re in September of 1942 and continuing through the early D models these planes were in production well before Thunderbolts were in combat lack of capability to carry a drop tank was simply never an issue for Thunderbolt range the problem was lack of a good drop tank so General Kenny had Thunderbolts equipped to carry drop tanks but no drop tanks he did what you would expect he wired Hap Arnold the head of the usaaf and asked for drop drop tanks to be sent immediately by air if possible Hap Arnold responded by sending him only two drop tanks not two types two tanks both of which couldn't be attached to the Thunderbolt without significant modification and they only held 110 gallons which was fine for a P39 or a P40 but way too small for a Pacific Theater Thunderbolt and really for any Thunderbolt in fact it appears from this page in the book Kirby's Thunderbolts that these tanks s were literally P39 or P40 drop tanks which makes sense that explains why they wouldn't attach in any case they were not Thunderbolt drop tanks at this point General Kenny seemed to understand that help with drop tanks would not be coming through official channels so he went over to the 27th repair Squadron told the mechanics and Machinists there what he wanted and within 2 days they had a suitable 200 gallon drop tank for the Thunderbolt of course the 27th couldn't mass-produce them so for that they farmed the workout to Ford of Australia I don't have an exact date for when the first batch of Tanks produced by Ford of Australia was ready but it appears to have been around the first week maybe the second week of August 1943 in other words they designed built and tested the first tank in 2 days and about 6 weeks later those tanks were coming off an assembly line and from an automotive company who had never built drop tanks before this shows that when desired drop tanks for the Thunderbolt could be designed and mass-produced in very little time there is no excuse for the nearly year-long delay p-47s had getting dropped tanks in other theaters especially considering Hap Arnold had the entire us aviation industry and a large part of the US automotive industry at his beck and call in fact the median time to build an entire Liberty ship in 1943 was 39 days how people can argue that putting a drop tank on a thunderbolt was some sort of insurmountable problem for the usaaf is simply Beyond me especially when General Kenny did it without access to us industry in about 6 weeks the bottom line is that the Thunderbolts in Europe lacked a decent drop tank because of choices made by the bomber Mafia not due to any technical limitation now there seems to be a huge misconception out there that because the early Thunderbolts as used by The Fifth Air Force in 1943 were not built with Provisions to pressure ized drop tanks that those tanks were not usable at high altitude I hear this all the time the incorrect idea that if a tank isn't pressurized you can't use it above 20,000 ft as the early p-47s didn't have Provisions to pressurize a drop tank this is often given as a reason usually the reason that good drop tanks were not available for the Thunderbolt in the European theater first of all the idea that a drop tank has to be pressurized to work above 20,000 feed is absolutely false so we need to talk about this the biggest problem when feeding from a drop tank not the only problem but the biggest problem is that at high altitudes the fuel boils off fast boiling off is much like evaporation but faster the boiling point is hugely affected by atmospheric pressure which of course decreases with altitude thus the higher the altitude the more rapidly the fuel boils off and the bigger the problem the reason boil off is an issue is because the fuel will then form Vapors which will get in the line between the tank and the aircraft fuel pump that causes the pump to vapor lock this problem gets magnified the higher the pump is relative to the tank this caused what's commonly referred to as the Thunderbolt drop tanks 20,000 foot limitation I think that number and that reference comes from Francis Gaby's book in which he talks about an early unpressurized drop tank for the Thunder and he correctly puts that limitation at 20,000 ft I think people read more into this than what gabreski actually said what he says here is true but he wasn't trying to write an all-encompassing explanation about how drop tank altitude limits work he was just commenting on what he had on his plane at a specific point in time what I think people are missing here is that there are a lot of other ways to solve this problem pressurizing the tanks is one way to solve it and it's a good way but but it's not the only way or even the most common way pressurizing the tanks was originally called supercharging the tank first because it literally is supercharging the tank second because the tanks were often pressurized by tapping pressure off of the engine Supercharger which is exactly how the Germans usually did it normally drop tanks were pressurized to about 6 PSI above ambient this diagram is for a German fw10 A5 4 A6 it shows that the drop tank is pressurized through a line coming from the aircraft's engine Supercharger at position 23 the line at position 23 the valves at 24 and 25 are there to regulate pressure and prevent reverse flow to our friends who can read German let me know in the comments if I have that right I'm pretty sure I do tank pressurization is great but do the tanks have to be pressurized do you think they're pressurizing the fuel tanks in this dc10 to 6 PSI now of course I know it's powered by jet engines and it doesn't have drop tanks but that number two engine is far higher relative to the fuel tanks which are in the wings than they are in any World War II fighter with drop tanks usually designers of airliners solve this particular issue by putting the pumps in the fuel tanks sometimes below back to the Thunderbolt the easiest and cheapest way of dealing with all of this was to pressurize the drop tank but that was specifically forbidden by the US Army Air Force as you can see in this document I'll cover this and other barriers to drop tank development in another video and these were regulatory hurdles and barriers not technical ones the point is that although it would have been very easy for Republic to do this on the assembly line or to retrofit Republic didn't equip the Thunderbolt with a way to pressurize a drop tank because they were not allowed to by the usaaf leadership being aware of this and trying to solve the problem yet operating within the everchanging Myriad of rules on drop tanks Republic went the extra mile to find a way around the usaaf leadership's poor decisions and came up with an alternative instead of pressurizing the tank they offered more powerful fuel pump options the more powerful pump options allowed for the use of an unpressurized drop tank up to 35,000 ft here are the altitude limitations for unpressurized drop tanks on a thunderbolt with a normal G9 fuel pump and we're talking about a belly drop tank here you should notice two things first the altitude is somewhat dependent on power the lower the power required the higher the altitude limitation for example in the case of a belly tank the pump can provide enough fuel for 42 in of manifold pressure and 2550 RPM up to 17,250 Ft the 20,000 ft number we read in Francis G bresky's book was for an unpressurized t and it's actually a cruise power setting which is shown here to be 19,900 ft the other thing you should notice is that the wing mounted drop tanks are usable to higher altitudes that's because tanks themselves are higher relative to the pump due to the wings dihedral of course Republic knew all of this it wasn't a surprise to them it's just basic physics and they knew it would be desirable to go higher with drop tanks so they offered other fuel pumps for the job this is part of the same document here it shows the fuel pump options for p47 drop tanks it lists their altitude limits at military power that's 42 in manifold pressure and 2550 RPM this shows that the max altitude with the standard G9 pump is 177,000 Ft they offered a G10 pump which allowed military power at 22,000 ft 5,000 ft higher from that we can surmise it could have run at a pretty high Cruise power setting at 27,000 ft they also offered the K1 pump which could run at military power all the way up to 35,000 ft it should be extremely clear that the lack of tank pressurization in the early Thunderbolts is not at all altitude limiting and certainly not a valid excuse for not having Dro tanks on the plane while the document showing the test results of these planes is from July of 1943 I think it's likely that these pumps were available much earlier back over to the Pacific Theater General Kenny's drop tank was ready for use and the Thunderbolts came from the factory with a good rack to mount them this picture shows a Fifth Air Force Thunderbolt with the Brisbane drop tank the brisban tank was not pressurized it did not need to be because of the fuel pump changes sadly I can't tell you exactly what they did with the fuel pumps one problem with researching drop tanks is that people at the time didn't write down a lot about them but in the book Kirby's Thunderbolts it talks about some sort of fuel pump modification I don't know if the was an additional G9 pump a K1 pump or what here is what I do have this document is interesting for several reasons first general Kenny's tank which I'm calling the Brisbane tank used Republic's mounting system we know that therefore it did not require some later type of uh rack however back in the United States Republic was being forced to switch over to the newer standardized B7 rack on the Thunderbolts belly but that wouldn't work with the brisan tank thus as shown here Republic had to keep the older mount in production specifically for Fifth Air Force p-47s at least until October of 1943 and they did just that this document also gives us a clue as to the fuel pump solution it clearly states they did not use tank pressurization that's important to note but that they needed an additional G9 fuel pump but Republic was unclear about where the Fifth Air Force was mounting that pump and considered just including them loose with the airplanes this indicates to me that they were running a second or a relocated G9 pump maybe somehow lower or closer to the tank but I can't be sure I also have this excerpt from an August 7th 1943 letter from General Kenny that gives us a lot of really important information on the Fifth Air Force Thunderbolts first he talks about the tail Wheels only lasting four or five Landings thus he was in need of a lot of tail Wheels my guess is that the Republic tail wheel wasn't compatible with Mar and matting which was commonly used for us Runway Construction in the Pacific they must have resolved this quickly because I've only seen this issue referenced one other time he then says that without drop tanks his Thunderbolts wouldn't have enough range to go to the Markham Valley for reference the Markham Valley was where the action was at this point in our story it's about 230 mi from Port morby for comparison the eth Air Force in Europe initially considered 175 miles to be the maximum combat rate radius of the p47 without a drop tank after about a month to get familiar with the area they expanded that to 230 Mi this shows that the combat radius of the Thunderbolt without drop tanks was about the same in either theater back to our letter General Kenny then says he was getting impatient waiting for drop tanks to come through official channels and made his own which we of course know as the Brisbane tank note that it's often called a 200-gallon tank but it actually held 220 Gall it was normal for drop tank sizes to be somewhat nominal he then describes the fuel pressure with the drop tank the speeds reached and perhaps most importantly the fact that it was good to 35,000 ft this should put to bed any of this nonsense about it being impossible to use a p47 drop tank without pressurization above 20,000 ft even if the lack of tank pressurization wasn't the fault of the US Army Air Force leadership which it was there was still a workaround which Republic developed and another workaround which the US mechanics in Australia developed independently the letter then talks about a Turbocharger bearing problem I think that was solved because I never heard about it again I suspect this was simply because the pilots were not used to hearing a Turbocharger mounted in the fuselage spinning fast at high altitudes I'm not sure but again this problem was never mentioned again the letter closes out saying that General Kenny was enthusiastic about the p47 he was one of the a few people in the Pacific at the time who felt that enthusiasm the Thunderbolt just didn't look like a typical fighter over in Europe Pilots were quite disappointed when they first saw the plane and wanted to keep their Spitfires however it wasn't long before the European theater Pilots were sold on the big plane and I never heard of any of them asking to switch back in the Pacific it was much the same way except that Pilots wanted P38 Lightnings to deal with this morale issue General Kenny had Neil Kirby the command commander of the 348 Fighter Group fly in a mock dog fight against the commander of a P38 Squadron the Thunderbolt prevailed Kirby then flew in a mock dog fight against dick bong a leading us Ace and the man who would eventually become the all-time us Ace of Aces apparently they called that one a draw the big plane could fight of course once the pilot started flying it they really learned what it could do and how to use it yes the Thunderbolt is huge but she's a whole lot of Rosie so what about rain when equipped with the Brisbane tank how much range did the Thunderbolt have let's do some quick range calculations now I do have a Pacific Theater manual for the Thunderbolt it's a good manual and it's just been added to the patreon section in PDF format Link in description but unfortunately it's from June of 1944 by that point they had introduced newer Thunderbolts with wing racks to carry P38 style drop tanks and newer design belly racks the Brisbane tank is mostly a 194 43 thing they were still using them in 1944 but they slowly faded away once the newer tanks started being phased in in fact today there are only two known Brisbane tanks in existence this is one of them so we have to use Republic's January 1942 manual which does have range data with a 200-gallon republic tank as that's the best we can do I'll have to go with it bear with me as range numbers are highly contentious so I want to be thorough here if you don't want to I go through all this math just skip ahead that's perfectly fine first we need to know how much fuel are are we going to use during engine start warm-up taxi takeoff and forming up we have good data on that from Colonel how who did a lot of the range testing in England with the Eighth Air Force he started up taxied took off on the main fuel tank and then switched over to the drop tank at about 1,000 ft which makes sense then burn fuel out of the 75gal drop tank which actually held 80 3 Gall burn that fuel until that drop tank was empty at which point the plane was at 27,500 FT and had traveled 161 miles his estimate based on his testing was that the 75gal tank would get a thunderbolt up to 25,000 ft and 140 to 150 mi from base including forming up after takeoff so that's a pretty good number I'll use 140 mil here I realized this isn't a 200g tank but it's the best we have and it's probably very close of course some fuel was used from the main internal tank during ground operations takeoff and the climb to 1,000 ft so we need to know how much internal fuel is on board when the external tank is dropped the rates of fuel consumption for the r2800 are Rock Solid straight from the Pilot's manual using maximum power for takeoff we will burn fuel at a rate of 275 Gall per hour up to 1,000 ft when will pull power back for the climb that's going to take less than 1 minute which I'll round up to 5 gallons of gasoline I'm rounding everything up or down in other words I'm not using advantageous numbers in these calculations the Pilot's manual does not give rate of fuel consumption for ground operations but rather it groups engine startup warmup takeoff and climb to an unspecified altitude together pegs it at 45 Gall doesn't matter much for our work today but that unspecified altitude is right about 15,000 ft based on my own experience with aircraft engines the ground operations will take about 15 Gallons at most I also tested this in digital combat simulator which is very accurate and certainly accurate in regards to fuel flow rates and I find the numbers are usually closer to 10 gallons maybe 12 now I know that it's only a simulator but of course I don't have a real Thunderbolt so it's the best I could do for this test I used missions from reflected simulation which factor in everything from the actual bases the 56th Fighter Group used in England that means starting warm up the taxi out taking off in pairs everything and it's usually less than 20 gallons to get to 1,000 ft all right so at this point we've traveled 140 Mi and we have 137 gallons left in our 220 gallon drop tank how far can we go on that for that we go to this chart from the manual our total fuel on board at this point is about 422 gallons that's 137 gallons in the drop tank 285 internally remember we use 20 gallons of internal fuel before switching to the drop tank from this chart the closest we have is 425 Gall which is close enough and on that we can go 1140 mil we divide 1140 by 425 to get mil per gallon because that's an easy thing to work with and we get 2.68 m per gallon for a thunderbolt in this configuration with this fuel load multiply that by 137 the number of gallons left in the drop tank to find out how much farther we can go on drop tank Fuel and we get 367 mil add that to our 140 for a total distance with no wind but including warm-up taxi takeoff forming up and climbing out of 507 miles at which point we drop the tank and operate on internal fuel note that we could go farther if we could accept a lower altitude however I use numbers up to 30,000 ft to keep this realistic over New Guinea p-47s typically cruised between 24,000 ft and 28,000 ft much like in the European theater there was a mountain range between the main US base at Port morby and the Japanese positions and the Peaks were all around 15,000 ft High also the Japanese Army was flying Kawasaki k61 tonies I have a video about that airplane but just know that in 1943 it was quite threatening to us Fighters it could outturn any us fighter and it had a top speed at lower altitudes about equal to a 1943 Thunderbolt with very similar dive performance in fact in all the reports I've read from combat Thunderbolt Pilots the Tony is the only prop driven plane that is ever mentioned as having dive performance equal to a thunderbolt below 15,000 ft the Thunderbolts did not have any real advantages over the key 61 Tony so the Thunderbolts tended to stay up high where they did have an edge keep in mind we're talking about Thunderbolts with toothpick props and no water injection not the later versions of the Thunderbolt which were much more formidable before we go farther I need to explain the red numbers on this chart I know that there are people that will incorrectly claim that this chart somehow shows that the Republic drop tank couldn't go to 30,000 ft it certainly could if set up with the right fuel pumps that's why the data is on this chart the note at the bottom states that the numbers in red are subject to revision after flight check thinking about that logically it also means that the numbers in Black are not what's subject to revision are the range speed and power numbers the stuff in red that doesn't mean those numbers are wrong it means that either they are just numbers from Republic that haven't been verified by the usaaf or are based on calculations range numbers are always on the side of caution and Aviation otherwise when on long range missions fuel exhaustion accidents would be the norm rather than the exception now there were fuel exhaustion accidents 24 P-51 Mustangs were lost in one day due to fuel exhaustion that wasn't because they couldn't meet their published range numbers it was because they got lost and couldn't find their Island thus the pilots had to bail out or ditch these same sorts of things happened to Thunderbolts and probably every other type of fighter in the Pacific Theater also red numbers were the norm not just for the Thunderbolt because numbers were being revised all the time for example here is a chart for the p-51b they are all red as well here is the takeoff performance chart for the p-51b same thing that doesn't mean you can't take off it doesn't mean these numbers are not at least in the ballpark again they're probably on the side of caution we don't have a later chart for the Thunderbolt Razer back with a 200-gallon tank at least I have never seen one but these numbers do align with everything we do have furthermore there is a from the same manual without a drop tank without a drop tank and those numbers are also in red but they are identical and I mean identical to those from the November manual which has those in Black thus of the red numbers that were verified and that we can check literally none changed back to our mission we left off after flying 507 miles we dropped our external tank if you remember correctly we had to go 367 Mi on drop tank fuel at 200 mph indicated that's 206.000 Mi will take us about an hour and 12 minutes plus about 33 minutes for the climb and it's an hour and 45 minutes now all that time the Thunderbolts Vapor return line was putting fuel back into the main tank it does this at a rate as high as 10 Gall per hour less at higher power settings in our scenario iio I'm going to guess it's around 7 Gall per hour which means it will have returned about 12 gallons into the main tank thus we will have about 297 gallons on board when we drop the external tank not quite the full internal of 305 but pretty close combat radius is determined by internal fuel in this case and in a lot of cases so the question now is after 20 minutes of combat and with keeping 30 minutes of Reserve fuel which were the normal numbers for Mission planning in 1943 how far can we go we have a chart for that I'll put up the color version here initially to satisfy the red number Mafia and I already explained why I'm so confident that these red numbers in terms of range are correct furthermore as you'll see later the numbers off this chart line up with all sorts of official usaaf data I'm going to switch back to the black and white chart because it's a little bit sharper 20 minutes of combat will use no more than 76 gallons in this version of the Thunderbolt that's 5 minutes at emergency power 15 minutes at Max continuous Reserve fuel is normally calculated at the rate of minimum fuel consumption but I'm going to use 70 gallons an hour here so we need to add 35 gallons to that 76 we're going to use in combat that leaves us 186 gallons to get home after combat and with a good 30-minute Reserve at an altitude above most of the mountains in the theater back to our chart and we don't have a column for 186 Gall we could do the math but instead let's just use the 175 gallon column and that gives us a range of 486 miles so ultimately that's about the maximum combat radius of a p47 thunderbolt with 305 Gall of internal fuel now it could be stretched out a bit we could factor in that 11 gallons that I left out we could probably Cruise back at a lower altitude in a lot of cases and later in the War manual leaning was employed so we could in theory get quite a bit more range with that but I'm dealing with the theater and time period reality here we do have to avoid those key 61s and in some cases get over the mountains so far our calculations show 57 Mi outbound with a 220 gallon drop tank with the ability to fly 486 Mi back to base on internal fuel however these two numbers the 507 and the 486 are actually closer together because that 12 Gall that went from the drop tank into the main tank wasn't deducted from the 507 M number we need to do that now 12 Gall 2.68 m per gallon that's about 33 mil subtract that from 507 and we have an outbound range of 474 miles with the ability to fly 486 mil back to base allowing for combat and Reserves that works out to a combat radius for a thunderbolt so equipped of 480 Mi so how does our calculation compare with official data I would say quite well with dual 108 galon drop tank so about the same amount of fuel as a Brisbane tank slightly less the official combat radius for an escorting Razorback Thunderbolt is 475 miles that number is from The Eighth Air Force tactical summary a source not exactly friendly to Thunderbolt range and that 475 mile number is in there twice for this configuration I think that validates our calculation with wing pylons the Thunderbolt could carry other drop tanks dual 150 gallon tanks for example although these obviously have more fuel than the 108s they don't increase the plane's combat radius it's still 475 miles that makes sense because again combat radius is limited in all of these cases by internal fuel it won't matter if we have a single 220 gallon belly tank dual 108s or even dual 150s or 165s they all have the same limitations in terms of range getting home once the tanks are dropped the US Army Air Force final report that's what it's called final report on aircraft range gives a number of 450 miles their range number is slightly lower than ours because they're cruising back to base at 35 in of manifold pressure we use 31 in thus we are on Rock Solid Ground standing on a 450 M combat radius with the Brisbane belly tank I'll also mention that Chris vahy a modern-day warbird pilot who flies the P38 and a lot of other cool stuff commented in the chat of a recent debate on Thunderbolt range and he said that combat radius for this airplane is 450 Mi once the tanks are dropped and is ultimately limited by internal fuel not that Chris vahe is an official US Army Air Force Source I'm not saying that but his opinion on Range certainly has at least some weight let's summarize this video at this point I think I busted a lot of myths in this video tank pressurization is a big one this comes up all the time so I've shown two documents one from boand and one from the US Army Air Force demonstrating that it was the US aaf not Republic that was responsible for the lack of pressurization in drop tanks not only that I have shown that Republic offered a workaround for the lack of tank pressurization that lack of tank pressurization having been forced upon them and I showed evidence from the US Army Air Force testing that going to 27,000 ft or even 35,000 ft on an unpressurized drop tank was not a problem with Republic's workaround in place furthermore I showed that in actual practice the Brisbane tank which was not pressurized was going to 28,000 ft via the Fifth Air Force fuel pump fuel mod therefore all of this big talk about a lack of tank pressurization being the reason Thunderbolts couldn't escort into Germany is a bunch of nonsense from people that either don't know the history understand the technical issue or possibly both I think the most important myth busted here is the idea that it was somehow impossible or very difficult to put a good 200 gallon drop tank onto a thunderbolt in early 1943 it wasn't and the proof of this is that as soon as general Kenny received his Thunderbolts he had a good 220 galon tank designed and into production in about 6 weeks with relatively limited resources to make that happen he was putting those tanks on Thunderbolts that had Factory drop tank mounts that had been on every production Thunderbolt built from about September of 1942 actually I think earlier there was absolutely no reason this could not have been done in the United States much earlier for the planes that were headed to the European theater perhaps most importantly I showed via not only the math but two separate US Army Air Force sources that a Razorback Thunderbolt with 220 gallons or thereabouts of drop tank fuel had an honest 450 M combat radius in fact the escort radius is listed as 475 miles in one of those two documents which almost exactly lines up with our mathematical calculations using numbers from the Republic manual which also serves to show that the range charts in the January of 1943 Thunderbolt manual are in harmony with later data red numbers are not that 450 Mile and certainly the 475 mile number give the Thunderbolt enough range to escort to nearly all the targets the US Army Air Force hit in Germany in 1943 specifically and probably most importantly schweinf for which matters because the reason most often given for the huge losses of us bombers on the schweinf for raids is the Thunderbolts so-called lack of range it was actually a lack of drop tanks an easily solvable issue which was proven by General Kenny and the Fifth Air Force in theth Southwest Pacific it's worth noting that General Kenny's Brisbane tanks were eventually emulated in the European theater with this 215g Centerline tank in some cases meaning when more fuel wasn't needed this was preferable to the wing tanks because once dropped that beautiful seki Wing is en cluttered by performance robbing pylons I have a lot more I can say on drop tanks especially about all the roadblocks put up by the bomber Mafia to hinder drop tank devel vment and implementation however I think that's enough drop tank information for now in the next video I'm going to cover actual missions flown in the Pacific to show just how far Thunderbolts flew operationally and I'll compare and contrast that with European theater missions I think this will be very eye openening for a lot of people please like And subscribe and consider joining my patreon on patreon you will find that Pacific Theater p47 manual as well as general Kenny's book and many other air craft manuals and historical books and documents in fact just about everything I have used to create the videos on this channel can be found there plus I answer questions there I have polls and patreon members get early access to videos and can see them add free during that early access period now there's just one more thing I want to talk about people keep asking me about the increased internal fuel mod done to the 305g Razorback Thunderbolts in the Pacific that means the Razer back Thunder bolts that only hold 305 gallons internally which is pretty much all of them there was such a mod that did exist it involved a 42g self-sealing tank more or less located behind the pilot seat just after the armor plate I have very little information on this mod in fact I only learned about it when reading a website page about the restoration of a thunderbolt wreckage which is now a beautiful flying airplane called Bonnie you can look it up it's a fantastic example of a restored Republic Razorback Thunderbolt it appears that this mod was done on a very small number of airplanes and for a very limited time as I've mentioned before the Thunderbolt wasn't the easiest to fly or the most stable fighter in the first place and putting a tank after the cockpit would have moved the center of gravity farther AF making it more difficult to fly now I'm not saying the Thunderbolt was terribly difficult to fly it does a lot of good things going for it good aerons wide track landing gear but it's not easy now I read that General Kenny felt that for some reason this additional self-sealing fuel tank presented an increased fire hazard and so he put a stop to the mod I don't know if that's true or not however consider this his book has quite a bit of space devoted to the Brisbane tank so we know we know that he felt that was important yet the internal 42g tank mod isn't even mentioned in his book that tells me that the internal tank was not significant ific to him on the site Pacific reck they have a list of all Thunderbolts lost in the South Pacific well the Southwest Pacific anyway the people that run this site are hardcore they comb through the jungles of New Guinea looking for wreckages of all the Thunderbolts they have found only two of them had this internal tank field mod both of them were D 23s and they were consecutive serial number airplanes that tells tells me a few things first the d23 was the last of the Razer back so this mod even if it didn't create a fire hazard would have been made obsolete soon after by the bubble tops that were starting to show up thus it would have been a short-lived mod even if it did work really well which I sort of doubt the fact that we only know of two airplanes that had this mod and the fact that their consecutive serial number airframes also points to a mod done for a very short period of time and in very limited numbers it's also not mentioned in any of the books I have read about the Pacific Theater Thunderbolts not that there are a lot of those books in short I think it was something that was experimental and not even used at the Squadron level just on a handful of airplanes but I could be wrong and I'll let you guys know all about that if I discover any more okay that really is it I'll see you in the next video which will cover Thunderbolt missions in the Pacific goodbye and have a great day
