greetings this is Greg p-47 thunderbolt part 1 in this video we'll go over the basic design of the p-47 it's turbo super charging system and top speeds of various altitudes as compared with other fighters if you haven't seen this channels videos on manifold pressure and turbo vs. super charging in World War 2 aircraft you might want to watch those first links are in the description now nothing about the p-47s design was revolutionary its three major features were the big pratt & whitney r-2800 engine the turbo super charging system and thus averse t wing all of these things had been used individually on other planes before the AR 2800 was used a year earlier on the Corsair and the previous design from republic the P 43 Lancer had used a smaller air-cooled radial engine with the turbo supercharger and a similar wing thus the p-47 represented an evolutionary step a big step but not one that was revolutionary and this isn't a criticism I think it's part of the reason the plane works so well it wasn't as revolutionary as other attempts at building a modern turbocharged fighter for example the p38 or p39 the p-47s designer alexander cart belly packed it with technology but only with proven technology in the era when world war ii planes were developed manufacturers chose existing engines and design planes around them they normally chose between one of two major engine types the air-cooled radial or the liquid cooled v12 as technology advanced each type would gain advantage over the other and they would leapfrog each other as explained in my previous video in 1926 the development of ethylene glycol tilted the advantage towards the V types then in 1932 pratt & whitney released the AR 1830 air-cooled engine the R stands for radial in the 1830 is the engines nominal displacement in cubic inches it works out to just under 30 litres what's important here is that this engine had its 14 cylinders arranged in two rows of seven that matters because by using two rows of cylinders the displacement of the engine could be about double that of an equivalent single row but with no significant increase in frontal area in other words the 18:30 had about the frontal area of a 900 cubic inch engine but with twice the power most of the major radial engine fighters of World War two used engines with this multi row design there are of course some exceptions for example curtiss-wright managed to get eighteen hundred and twenty cubic inches into an engine with almost the same frontal area by squeezing nine cylinders into one row still generally speaking the more rows a radial engine has the better its power to frontal area ratio gets and it turns out that with two rows the v types advantage is reduced just enough to make the radials justifiable in some cases now the R 1830 was not the first twin row radial but earlier twin row radials suffer from cooling problems which had been mitigated with improvements in engines and cowling design now at this point in history the V type is still superior on paper but it's still 1932 and the R 1830 is ready for action the new v12 Allison wasn't quite ready for production thus the R 1830 was chosen for a number of military airplanes in the mid to late 1930s several designers used this engine for their aircraft these aircraft include the P 36 Hawk with its 1,050 horsepower R 1830 with a single stage supercharger it entered service in 1938 and although it's performance would have been considered pretty good when it first flew in 1935 by 1938 it was pretty much obsolete the Navy's f4f wildcat used this engine with a two-stage supercharger and it had decent performance at low and medium in 1940 and 41 until the advent of the p-38 lightning the only u.s. fighter in operation that was capable of fighting at high altitude was the Republic P 43 Lancer which also used the r18 30 the Lancer was not a stellar airplane it lacked self-sealing tanks didn't have armor it had some technical issues but it proved the effectiveness of the severe ski wing and the practicality of using a turbo supercharger in a fighter the P 43 along with the P 36 f4f wildcat and some others allowed for quite a bit of development in radial engine fighters a lot of this development was in improving the engine cowlings and cowlings were a huge area of focus for NACA there are so many reports on engine cowlings I couldn't really possibly go through them all in a video in this report here they tested eight radial engine cowlings and found the due to compressibility which is an issue I'll be covering a lot more in part to drag would increase massively above a certain speed with the best cowling they could come up with at the time they found there was a practical limit of about 480 miles per hour at low altitude and about 430 miles per hour of high thankfully for the designers of the p-47 this report was in 1939 which gave some time for further developments and improvements another issue was cooling cooling and drag are closely related but NACA did a lot of work to figure out how to reduce drag while still getting enough cooling I'm going to use pictures from a later report using the p-47 itself but earlier reports were done in largely the same way NACA would put a pressure sensor in front of and behind each cylinder and measured the difference that would tell them how much airflow is getting to each cylinder and then they would make changes to the cowling accordingly in 1940 NACA started testing a large number of military airplanes to evaluate drag and try and reduce it the results of that test were released in October of that year we're going to go through it this is a pretty important test for some reason they didn't have a p43 but they did have a p35 which is an earlier aircraft which also has the silver ski wing now the P 35 was one of the oldest planes in this test thus it has a little bit older version of the wing but it's still generally the same design now here are the results of the test for some reason they did not name a single airplane involved they assign them numbers 1 through 11 you can see the total drag for each plane in its original condition here now of course I took the trouble to figure out what you get what each airplane was it wasn't too hard since they had pictures of each plane in the full-scale wind tunnel plus line drawings and specs 3ch so here you go notice the old P 35 does pretty well here we'll come back to it the biggest surprise for me was the Vaught Vindicator The Vindicator is a radial engine dive bomber from 1937 looking at it we can see its family resemblance to the Corsair it has the closely cowl engine a very similar wing design of the inverted gull type and the leading edge of the horizontal stab is a bit forward clearly a family resemblance airplane 11 is probably an early version of the Kurtis XP 46 that wing is unmistakably a Kurtis design but it's still quite different from the actual XP 46 that flew so that's really my best guess anyway back to our diagram notice how high the p39 s drag is the only planes worse were the Brewster Buffalo and the Grumman biplane that's because the turbocharged version of the p39 had serious cooling issues and to try and solve them bill had to introduce some large drag inducing air scoops so those numbers are not representative of a production non turbo p39 not shown on this chart is that the P 35 had the lowest wing drag of all that's shown in another part of the report but I find that impressive because it's the second oldest plane in this test and the oldest monoplane that really says a lot about the severe ski wing the fuselage was another matter NACA found a lot of ways to clean up the fuselage as an example this is the approved oil core now I don't have a direct source telling me that Republic read this study and factored what was learned into the p-47 design but I have to think that they did and for two good reasons one if NACA does a study in your airplane and competitors airplane involved I think any designer that takes his work seriously is going to read it second a lot of the improvements made to the planes in this test were seen on the p-47 including improvements to the gun installation cockpit canopy various intake and exhaust ports and though the p-47 has a lot of intake and exhaust ports as we'll see additionally the p39 uses the same sort of turbosupercharger installation as the Republic p-47 teen and b-24 which as seen in this report causes a lot of drag this older type of turbo installation exposed the turbo to the airflow for cooling but it just wasn't efficient the p-47 turbo is configured exactly the way NACA suggested in this report this report came out in late 1940 the p-47 as we know it first flew in May of 1941 so I think they had enough time to implement the lessons learned here and I think that's exactly what they did so at this point we can see that everything was starting to come together for the p-47 republic aircraft formerly severe ski aircraft had experience with turbo supercharging and they had an excellent wing progress had been made in improving cowlings and engine cooling due to the popularity of the r18 30 and now in May of 1940 the new pratt & whitney r-2800 engine just made its first flight in thoughts f4u Corsair add in the fact that NACA had recently shown how to clean up the drag on republic's fuselage and turbo system and all the pieces are in place for the p-47 to come to get now before we get to the plane itself I want to mention that we're when we're talking about the p-47 Thunderbolt we're talking about the p-47 B and subsequent models there was a republic X P X is experimental X p-47 a it's seen here but that's an entirely different airplane which was never produced and it was abandoned in favor of the X p-47 B which is the plane that became the p-47 as we know it now why did Republic abandon the X p-47 a in favor of the B I don't know they certainly didn't publish publish that in public information but they did have some problems with the a now that's normal in the early stages of development of almost any plane from this era my suspicion is that they knew they would be pressed for time so going with the design that was more familiar to them a radial engine plane with the severity wing was just more comfortable and then knew it would work the a model was going to require a lot more development and maybe for nothing the radial engine turbo and svorski wing were all known quantities and of course war was coming enough about the background let's look at a production p-47 and go over some of the features I think the best way to do that is to start with the outside and then look under the sheet metal we'll start at the front notice the shape of the cowling is larger at the bottom than would be needed to simply enclose the engine republic decided to keep all the ducting and coolers in the fuselage against the extra size in the vertical dimension the cowling is a knack of design now below the engine in you can see the main duct here and it's immediately divided into three sections the two outboard sections provide air to the oil coolers the larger center section of the duct provides air to the intercooler cooling for the turbo and ram air to the turbo superchargers Inlet air flow through the oil coolers is regulated by the pilot via two electronically controlled shutters which are operated by a single switch shown here eleven the indicator for the shutter position is seen here as item four I should note this isn't always controlled by the pilot but later models had an automatic position so that if the pilot did not want to manually control the shutters they could control themselves automatically and I have no idea how well that function worked now the more the shutters are open the higher the drag but the greater the cooling operationally they should be set to neutral for engine start on the ground they're normally left in neutral except in very cold weather where they would often be closed to help the engine warm up faster once airborne they're positioned to allow for an oil temperature of about 95 centigrade 203 Fahrenheit in practical terms that means as soon as you're in crews at high altitude they'll usually be mostly closed managing drag is important in the p-47 and if it's not done correctly performance will suffer in this picture you can see the left side oil control shutter of course there's one on the other side as well just behind the shutter or I should say after the shutter is one of two wastegate exits for engine exhaust there's one on each side and when the turbo is not in use exhaust exits here as more and more demand is put on the turbo those gates close up more and more and direct an increasing amount of exhaust to the turbine in other words the pilot regulates manifold pressure largely by controlling the position of these waste gates the large flaps that go around the rear of the cowling are called cowl flaps these hydraulically operated flaps regulate cooling air flow to the engine when open they cause a lot of drag now typically at low speeds and high power they're gonna need to be fully open that means they'll be fully open for takeoff and after takeoff they're gonna be manipulated with a push-pull knob located on the right side of the instrument panel about position 35 seen here that is a position 35 seen here and the idea is to keep the cylinder head temperature gauge which is seen in position 33 at 260 senator or 500 degrees Fahrenheit or a little bit below now the cowl flap control allows four settings fully open fully closed or anywhere in between they cause a lot of drag when open and if cylinder-head temps get too hot or too cold performance and engine life will suffer so cowl flap management is very important in the p-47 on this plane we can see the right-side intercooler door there are two one on each side the switch and position indicator in the cockpit are of the same type and located next to those for the oil cooler doors again in later models there's an automatic position now the shutters need to be open enough to maintain a temperature on the car bear temperature gauge below 35 centigrade 95 fahrenheit or the threat of detonation will require manifold pressure to be reduced to 42 inches costing the plane 375 horsepower or more depending on the model so I'll just say that again you need to regulate the temperature to keep it below to keep the carb air temp below 95 degrees Fahrenheit or a performance will suffer massively now between the management of the oil cooler doors cowl flaps and intercooler shutters a lot of things have to be set correctly to get maximum performance out of the engine with a minimal amount of drag as a general rule for maximum performance in the p-47 all of these things should be wide open in a low-speed climb or during low to medium speed maneuvering especially at lower altitudes for maximum speed at high altitude you would configure with cowl flaps closed and the oil cooler doors and inner core shutters in neutral and you might be able to fine-tune them watching your gauges to get a squeak a little bit more speed out of your airplane now you might wonder why would you ever close the intercooler doors well there are two situations when you might want to do that it's possible although incredibly unlikely that you would have to close them to eliminate carburetor racing that's not really a factor in the p-47 but it's mentioned the manual as a remote possibility secondly if you're in cruise and not using much turbo boost or not using to boost all those you're in a fairly low manifold pressure you might be able to close them all the way to reduce drag while maintaining an acceptable carb temperature some modern cars do this as well certain Maseratis for example will shut off air flow to the intercooler for reduced drag and increased fuel efficiency notice the WW on the tail of this plane and here's another one ww stands for war-weary these are planes that are still flyable but deemed too worn out for combat usually they're older versions no longer favored they were used for search and rescue and carried a belly tank and typically to droppable self-inflating life rafts and smoke bombs under the wings the p-47 was a good plane for this role it was fast so it could search a large area it would then drop life rafts and stay on station until a rescue plane or a boat arrived all while having enough performance and firepower to defend itself or others if trouble showed up back to our technical subjects it's time to look under the sheet metal the right side of the picture is the front of the airplane so you've got to kind of get oriented here and the main air intake scoop is at position one this scoop is at the bottom of the cowling as we know at position two you can see that we have the oil cooler doors we talked about earlier often called shutters the waste gates are at position four they're controlled by the regulators for them at position three the dual exhaust pipes called exhaust stacks at position five run all the way back to the turbosupercharger at position 17 the exhaust then exits through the exhaust hood under the fuselage at position 16 that takes care of the exhaust side of things at least the engine exhaust side now the error that entered at position one and didn't go to the oil coolers eventually branches off at a location you can't see in this picture but it's just forward of the intercooler at position eight the upper portion of the air flows through the intercooler to lower the temperature of the turbochargers discharged air the air then exits the intercooler through the discharged ducts and intercooler shutters at spot 11 the thunderbolts intercooler is huge in the english language the prefix inter means between it's called an intercooler because it's located between the turbosupercharger and the mechanically driven supercharger and it cools the charged air in World War two airplanes charged coolers located after the last stage of super charging are called after coolers eventually an automotive terminology the word intercooler evolved to mean essentially any charge cooler regardless of location but technically most cars have after coolers and not intercourse intercooling does two main things for us it increases the charge air density by cooling it and it lowers the temperatures to help inhibit knock thus allowing for more boost it's often compared with water injection but these are two different things an intercooler or after cooler gives a relatively large increase in air density and relatively little anti-knock protection water injection is the opposite it gives relatively little increase in density but a lot of anti knock protection which is why so many world war ii airplanes use both most us designated correction most us design engines did not use after coolers they ran relatively low boost from the first stage supercharger and didn't really need them however they typically used inner coolers for the higher boost from the second stage back to our diagram there are two other branches of air there's a big lower branch that provides ram air to the turbochargers compressor in at position 14 and a very small branch at position 10 used for cooling the turbo through a shroud at position 15 this cooling is part of the reason the p-47 is not its turbo is not exposed to the airflow as it is and most of the other turbocharged u.s. airplanes NACA found that a lot of drag could be saved this way air exits the turbo through the duct at position 12 passes through the intercooler is cooled and then through the pipes at 18 to the injection carburetor will finish out this diagram with 6 7 & 9 which are the oil supply tank for the turbocharger the event line for the tank and the oil lines for the turbo at 13 we have the exhaust into the turbine section there were many models of the p-47 that saw combat there's the B C D G M and N and there are multiple sub variants for each model there were only a hundred and seventy one of the earlier B models built so we can sort of discount those the C and G were essentially the same airplane just built in different factories and production of these two models only amounted to 956 airplanes when you're talking about the p-47 that saw combat in World War two you are normally going to be talking about the D model as over 12,000 were built which represents the vast majority of p-47s it's time to look at the speed of the p-47 but which p-47 are we going to look at well as I mentioned the D model was built in the greatest numbers and it served from 1942 until the end of the war so I think it's the logical choice here but which D model there are 28 different variants of the D models and each one of those can use one of six different propellers the next problem is that some of the needed data is a bit scarce there were plenty of tests on the p-47 but trying to find a specific test with a specific fuel and propeller in a specific configuration with all the a Taiwan is a bit of a problem either the test plane has bomb racks installed fuel that wasn't available until mid-1944 or it doesn't have the full range of altitudes we need to look at or something and then you multiply these problems by the five airplanes we want to look at because we have to have some comparisons and compromises are gonna have to be made it's impossible to come up with data for perfect comparisons hopefully you're happy with what I did here and if not you just have to deal with it for the p-47 data I settled on a d5 model it's a water injected version running 58 inches of manifold pressure at war emergency power no bomb racks it's running a twelve point two inch Curtiss propeller of which there were three versions and I don't know which of those three was on this plane but they're all pretty similar anyway I was also missing data points for this plane at sea level and at 34,000 feet so I took the sea level data from a plane tested at 65 inches of manifold pressure but with no water injection and with bomb racks its performance was identical at 5,000 feet so it made sense to use that data for the sea level numbers for the data at 34,000 feet I had to take the data from another chart and interpret the data back to account for lack of the bomb racks I'm pretty happy with the numbers I came up with I think that they're extremely accurate and all of the other numbers that are going to be shown here are directly off of a official chart from the wartime for comparison I wanted to add in four airplanes a Spitfire mark 9 from 1943 was my first choice however I had to settle on a mark 9 from early 1943 running about 60 inches of manifold pressure so a little bit more manifold pressure than the thunderbolt I included the p-51 a based on comments in my other videos it appears that a lot of people under 8 the Allison powered p-51 the p-51 a is actually a really good airplane at low to medium altitudes finding a test on the X p-51 a the early prototype is pretty easy finding a test on a standard p-51 a at war emergency power is more hold the only test I could find with complete data used a plane that was a production airplane but had a few mods to make it faster mainly they sanded down the paint with 400 grit sandpaper if you don't deal with sandpaper take my word for it 400 grit is really fine so they made that plane super smooth and they also use tape to tape over a few things that they thought were increasing drag a little bit so nothing that somebody couldn't have done at the front lines but not truly a plane fresh off the production line either now of course I had to put in a p-51 be with the Merlin engine the p-51 be did make it into combat in 1943 but it was pretty late compared with the other planes here last I decided to include an FW 190 a five running c3 fuel which was the best the Germans had at the time so this is about the best conceivable 190 a thunderbolt could run into the one at that time the 190 was a low and medium altitude fighter but I've used BF 109 so much on this channel already I wanted a change of pace plus I happen to be working on a 190 video so it fits into my plan all of these airplanes flew and fought in 1943 some are high outs to planes and some are low altitude planes but the p-47s did have to fight down low sometimes and the FW 190s certainly had to fight up high because the American bombers were coming in to 25,000 feet so these comparisons are irrelevant at the end of this video I'll put up the actual reports I took the data from there's some room for about a 2 to 3 mile per hour error just from the rough conditions of some of the graphs I'll also put up a complaint form so if you feel your favorite plane has been treated unfairly you can let me know about filling it out and sending it in now let's start with the low altitude data as you can see down low the p-47 does not exactly set the world on fire but it's not slow either the fw 190 poses a serious threat to the p-47 in this realm partially because it's faster the Spitfire mark 9 isn't looking too good right now but it will get better as it the Allisyn powered p-51 really does well down here now as I said earlier this is a slightly modified airplane so I think those numbers are a bit high probably about 10 miles per hour high but still the p-51 a is fast at these altitudes the Allisyn puts out a lot of power down low and the plane is very slick the merlin powered p-51 B does well here and it does well at all altitudes as we'll see in terms of top speed the p-51s aerodynamics just serve it very very well now let's look at the medium altitudes the p-47 catches up to the Allison powered p-51 and FW 190 now 20,000 feet is right about where this version of the 190 max is out at supercharger stage which is why it's doing pretty well there the Spitfire finally catches up with a p-51 a but again I need to stress this is an early Mark 9 against an abnormally fast 51a in most cases the mark 9 would have probably caught up by about 15,000 feet but still the 51a is faster than most people think for what it's worth Wikipedia shows a top speed for the p-51 a of 409 miles per hour at 10,000 feet now I'm not sure what their source was but it may have been the same one that I used now let's look at the high-altitude numbers the p-47 could fly at 30,000 feet or higher and it typically would fly at 30,000 feet while escorting u.s. bombers which were flying at 25,000 at that altitude 30,000 it's 59 miles per hour faster than the 190 at this altitude in 1943 only the p-51 be can outrun a p-47 but the p-47 has other advantages which we'll eventually get to now of course it's possible to use different planes or different versions for comparison I get that and I'm sure we'll be getting comments that point that out but no comparison of world war ii fighters is a perfect apples-to-apples case we can always pick a faster version of our favorite plane or a slower version of some other airplane however if we play that game the p-47 wins because with 70 inches of manifold pressure the p-47 D would run 444 miles per hour with bomb racks installed in fact this exact airplane in this picture did that furthermore the p-47 M which came out later in the war could do 473 miles per hour making it the fastest allied piston-engined fighter to see combat in World War two it's very likely that some p-47s in the field could easily exceed their publish maximum speeds now that I know this is pretty controversial and I'm not usually one to buy into things like this but I think it's true in the case of the p-47 it's pretty easy to adjust the turbo super charging system so it puts out more boost and there's room to do it because Republic didn't build these planes with all the components right on the ragged edge of self-destruction u.s. ace Robert s Johnson claimed in an interview that factory tech reps showed his crew chief Pappy gould how to adjust the waist case to provide higher than standard manifold pressure his p-47 was a d5 with water injection and was apparently set to run 72 inches this plane had some further special attention via sanding and waxing first of all let's talk about the 72 inches of manifold pressure a lot of people dispute this but is it a reasonable claim I think so a standard p-47 d5 would run 58 inches of manifold pressure giving it 2300 horsepower and could hold that up to a maximum altitude of 25,000 feet in the standard atmosphere with 130 octane fuel it was able to run 64 inches however by mid-1944 p-47s were regularly running 70 inches with 150 octane fuel and water injection and the later M&N models both ran at 72 now these later planes were slightly different versions with slightly different engines than the AR 2800 - 20 and johnson's plane but not much different also Johnson didn't say exactly when his plane was modded but I suspect it was at a time 130 octane fuel is available so going from 64 inches to 72 it seems quite reasonable especially since his plane was apparently well cared for and he probably took extra care to avoid knock by monitoring his carbon cylinder head temperatures he started flying at the age of 14 and in Oklahoma where in the summer knock is a problem so it's safe to say he was a highly experienced pilot by world war ii fighter pilot standards so how fast did he say his plane was he made two specific statements about this he said that he flew all the versions of the p-47 including the EM and that his personal d-5 was the best one he goes on to say that he saw 300 miles per hour indicated at around 32,000 feet and he figures that was around 470 miles per hour of true airspeed that is a big statement looking at this objectively I have to consider all the variables and see how they stack up I completely by the 72 inches of manifold pressure no problem there he never says how high the plane could go and still get 72 inches but that is the real question could it maintain that up to 32,000 feet which is what it would need to do to have the speed he's claiming now we know that the later D models could hold 70 until just over 23,000 rpm that limitation was due to the altitude limitation that is was due to the turbochargers maximum speed of 18,000 250 rpm which is actually pretty low for a turbo I'll have to assume that if the factory reps top Pappy Gould his crew chief how to increase manifold pressure they also taught them how to increase the maximum turbine speed without blowing things up I have seen one reference saying that this turbo had been run up to 20 1300 rpm in the XP 47b the factory reps would have known that and in fact you really have to increase the maximum turbine shaft speed because if you can't maintain that higher manifold pressure up to higher altitudes where the planes actually going to fight what's the point so I think logically we have to conclude that they did and could increase the maximum shaft speed of the turbo now the later M and end models had different turbos they had maximum speeds of 22,000 rpm 20% higher than the D that extra 20% is the primary reason the later airplanes were able to hold that manifold pressure until 30 mm as opposed to 23,000 for the older airplanes now the D and M models have the same wing but different fuselages we know that Johnson's plane was cleaned up didn't have bomb racks individual planes vary but it sounds like this was the best possible d5 with the very best care if it could have overspent it's turbo by 20% I think it would have had the same power and speed of a p-47 M which could do a little over 470 at 32,000 feet is that 20% over speed possible I think so but it's tough to say it's common to have engines with 5,000 rpm redlines hits 6,000 rpm and not blow up that's 20% of course the forces are different in an engine than a turbo it's common for turbos though and in automotive applications designed for maximum speeds of 180,000 rpm to hit 220 in fact it's done all the time obviously I don't have an ancient GE turbo here to test to destruction but I'm willing to take Robert s Johnson's word on it since all the facts he provided seemed to add up to the extent that I can check them meaning that the engine could handle that manifold pressure if knock was avoided the turbo could be spun up fast enough in fact had been spun out fast enough in testing to maintain that manifold pressure up to very high altitude at least thirty thousand if not thirty-two and those numbers on a good p-47 would give about that speed but one more thing he said that he saw 300 miles per hour indicated which he determined is around four hundred and seventy miles per hour true his math checks out if it was about twenty degrees colder than standard on that 20 degrees centigrade that is really really cold but not impossibly cold and we are talking about Germany in the winter during World War two it was not a pleasant place especially at altitude so if you don't understand the difference between indicated airspeed and true airspeed don't worry about it too much just wait I will cover it when we get into maximum dive speeds in part two that's a big part of that video and a big part of the p-47 so let's summarize the p-47 came out in late 1942 and flew through the end of the war for most of that period with the exception of the Merlin power p-51s the p-47 D was the fastest piston powered plane at high altitude over Europe at 70 inches of manifold pressure a D with wing racks could do 444 miles per hour there are a small number of German planes which were faster but by the time they showed up around that time the p-47 M came out which could reach 473 miles per hour at 32,000 feet no bf-109 variant was anywhere near that fast nor were any FW 190s a case can be made for the TA 152 if it's spraying nitrous and at a high enough altitude and maybe the Dornier 335 but I don't think it could do it at those altitudes both of those planes were built in incredibly low numbers probably only a few dozen and as far as I know neither one encounter two p-47 at least I couldn't find evidence of that I think it's reasonable to think that there were at least some p-47 D s that could do at least 450 to 460 miles per hour I doubt Robert S Johnson's was the only one that was modified even if you don't believe his claim of 470 you almost have to believe say 455 since they went for 44 with wing racks and slightly less manifold pressure in official testing 455 is still really fast similar claims about modifications of other airplanes like one anions or Spitfires might be true but I don't think so increasing the boost from a gear driven supercharger is much more involved at least above the aircraft the superchargers critical altitude so I don't find many of these stories as believable my wife just bought me a new computer so I plan to get some World War 2 flight Sims I'm excited to see how accurate these newer Sims are historically flight Sims tend to have p-47s that underperform with performance specs from the versions that only ran 52 or 58 inches of manifold pressure I'm not sure why that is because for the last 12 months of the war they ran 70 or 72 inches that is clearly documented they will often have top performing versions of German planes and of Spitfires that were very rare but not the p-47 with at 70 inches which was very common at least the older Sims were that way I'll see how the new ones are now the p-47s that were sent to Europe were typically shipped in crates most of it was preassembled it was sort of like an almost ready to fly radio-controlled airplane to real airplane the major pieces needed to be put together of course once it reached England now no special tools or equipment were required it could be done by a team of 50 people with nothing but hand tools in a shovel and usually only one guy that really knew knew what was going on so you and 49 of your friends could put together a p-47 should you come across such a kit the entire crate would come apart and be stacked in such a way as to form the platform the plane was assembled on they would put it together dig holes below the wheels hence the need for the shovel and then they could extend the gear once the things had connect once they had everything connected they could release the fuselage from its mounts compress the gear fill the holes in the earth maybe not all quite in that order and then roll the plane forward to finish the assembly England at that time had a lot of craftsmen and people familiar with mechanical things so getting teams of civilians to do this was fairly common and apparently was pretty easy I think it was clever of Republic to design the plane so it could be assemble this way of course in the Pacific it was another matter in many cases the planes had to be shipped ready to fight finding a team of civilians with enough mechanical skill to assemble the p-47 on some remote Pacific island wasn't an option the decision was made to send them on ships fully assembled ready to fly one type of shift chosen was the escort carrier these ships were only five hundred and twelve feet long they're so short that the Corsairs and Hellcats couldn't effectively operate from them which is why they used wild cats until the end of the war or something I'd touch on in another video getting p-47s onto ships would be relatively easy the US Navy is really good at using cranes getting them off was the issue even with the carrier at its maximum forward speed to give the Thunderbolt about a 20 mile per hour headwind it would still require a thirteen hundred foot takeoff role and that was if it was very lightly loaded with a total length of 512 feet of ship and a lot of that was used up by parked airplanes because you couldn't get a p-47 below the flight deck so as you'd imagine the takeoff roll required was going to be a problem however many of these tiny carriers had catapults maybe all of the night I don't know about that but the ones that carried p-47 side catapults someone decided that it should be possible to catapult the lightly loaded p-47 off of an escort carrier they were correct but just barely it's very clear in the few videos of this that the 47s were just barely able to maintain flying speed but as far as I know they all made it one escort carrier it's a particularly famous incident escort carrier USS Manila Bay came under attack by Baal dive bombers with its deck packed with p-47 you can even see a bomb in this picture before it hits the water for thunderbolt pilots took to their planes and launched all with success now if you're a Vall pilot and a p-47 is coming after you you are having a really bad day so once the p-47s were in the air the vols were long gone so the four Thunderbolts blue combat air patrol until naval radar showed that they were clear and then they flew on to Saipan and landed safely and the rest of the squadron I think got there the next day or within several days in part two we'll cover dive speeds armored protection some unusual features of the plane and of course more NACA information hopefully I'll be able to finish this up in a third part I'm not sure yet it's possible this is gonna need a fourth part anyhow please like and subscribe and consider becoming a patreon supporter details are on the about page of this channel now here are the original charts from which I pulled the speed data and the form mentioned in case any specific aircraft fanboys or buts hurt that I didn't tilt things towards their favorite airplane I'll leave each one on the screen for 10 seconds or so as always have a great day and I look forward to reading your comments below thanks you
Great video. I love the effort and the information he puts in those.