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Military history: Aviation / North America / United States / World War II B‑class

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Aviation: Aircraft B‑class

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Suggestion

The information about earlier Aircraft from the same maufacturer should be move to the appropriate pages.

• I think a case can be made for leaving them there.

Not one of the early Seversky aircraft is interesting enough to be worth a separate entry, and they have an evolutionary sequence that leads almost directly to the P-47. In fact, at a casual glance the P-43 can be confused with the P-47.

However, although a number of my writings have been ported to the Misplaced Pages, I maintain a hands-off attitude towards how it is done, and so whatever you think is wisest is fine.

Article move

I request moving this article to follow the standard aircraft naming convention used for most other US airplanes --Denniss 09:51, 2005 May 7 (UTC)

This article has been renamed as the result of a move request. Republic P-47 and P-47 Thunderbolt have been swapped, leaving the article at the latter and some history at the former. P-47 remains a redirect]]. violet/riga (t) 14:34, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

How many aircraft kills did the P-47 have? - Disastermanx

Early Seversky aircraft, P-35 and P-35A

Nice section - except it's all about Mr Seversky, and not about the P-35 or P-35A. Perhaps this should be moved to Seversky's biography, and replaced by information on the P-35? Guapovia 16:29, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Tone Slightly Informal?

At least, the initial part seems a bit too colloquial. A good read, but not really "encyclopediaish", if that's a word. The content is accurate, just informal. Guapovia 16:49, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Jug

I think it ought to be pointed out that the nickname "Jug" for the P-47 was possibly an abreviation of "Juggernaut" due to the plane's then unprecedented size.

It wasn't. It was due to its rotund shape. - Emt147 23:33, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Whatever the reason for the monkier, it is, to the best of my knowledge, an abbreviation of Juggernaut. 85.210.49.160 06:36, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps you should improve your knowledge then. - Emt147 08:07, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I took "Juggernaut" and moved it down to the section where the British first came into contact with the P-47. My reference for this move is Air Force Fifty, a book put out by the Air Force Association (no single author listed). Binksternet 02:08, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Another instance of "Jug" being short for "juggernaut" showed up today, inadequately supported by a blog site. I deleted this edit, but there's no mention of the nickname's beginnings as being related to the rotund shape anywhere in the article as of this time. Anybody got a solid source? Best would be a "Jug" reference from before the fighter got to England. Binksternet (talk) 19:35, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

The nickname "Jug" was given to the plane by the 56th FG, 8th AF when they received their planes in late 1942/early 1943 as cited in Cory Graff's book "P-47 Thunderbolt At War", the P47 Thunderbolt Pilot's Association and the History Channel documentary "Thunderbolt" as well as their series "Dogfights". - 20:25, 31 May 2010. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.243.226.76 (talk)

Varible Pitch Constant Speed Prop for P-47

My impression is that the constant speed varible pitch prop was not introduced in this airplane until later in the C model and then all D models.

I remember notes from pilots reporting that the Razorback "D" model could climb like a scared cat.

Overall I think this is an excellent article.

John Cook

Using the phrase "constant speed variable pitch prop" is a very cumbersome way of describing a very basic piece of equipment on WWII airplanes. The phrase is actually quite redundant; all constant speed props are of variable pitch. The P-47 came right from the drawing board with a constant speed prop, as did all of the other American WWII fighters. The great increase in climb performance in the P-47Ds & subsequent Jugs was realized due to improvements in blade design--those ships had what became know as "paddle-bladed" props. As the name indicates, the blades were much wider (like a paddle or boat oar) & allowed the prop to more efficiently harness engine horsepower to develop more thrust, giving vastly improved climb performance. This widening of the prop blades assumed almost comical proportions on some of the props seen on later "D" models, & some of the P-47Ns, but boy they could climb!!! 192.100.70.210 10:52, 4 December 2007 (UTC)CBsHellcat

Bio

I pulled this bit:

De Seversky was born in 1894 in Georgia, and became a naval aviator in the Tsar's forces in World War I. He lost a leg early in the conflict, but returned to the air with an artificial leg and claimed 13 "kills" in combat.

After the October Revolution in 1917, De Seversky was sent to the United States as part of a 1918 military mission. Having no confidence in the new regime, he decided to stay in America, and became an aeronautical engineer in employ of the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC), where he worked closely with the air warfare pioneer General Billy Mitchell. De Seversky obtained American citizenship in 1927.

In 1931, De Seversky founded the "Seversky Aircraft Company" at Farmingdale on Long Island, in New York state. The company was very small, with De Seversky acting as president, designer, and chief test pilot, but he also hired a fellow Russian expatriate named Alexander Kartveli as a design engineer. Kartveli was an original designer with many innovative ideas, and would eventually become chief designer when De Seversky became more preoccupied with the business aspects of running a company.

The early Seversky aircraft, such as the Seversky P-35 and its relatives, were important steps on the way to the development of the P-47.

It belongs on De Seversky's bio page, not here. More severe copyediting to come... - Emt147 05:50, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism?

Some clownboat put the maximum speed for the P-47D at 467MPH, 32,500 feet. This is made especially obvious since the original metric velocity of 685KM/H remains unchanged...reverted to 426MPH. I'm pretty sure the top speed for the P-47N is 467MPH, 32,500 feet, but this is not mentioned in the P-47N's section at all, despite the fact that it DOES mention an uprated engine. dreddnott 07:14, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I must say I've never heard that epithet before.

Found images of XP-47H

I was looking for some more photographs to add to the P-47 site and found these images of the XP-47H. It was indeed a strange looking aircraft.
http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/061020-F-1234P-028.jpg
http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/061020-F-1234P-029.jpg
http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/061020-F-1234P-030.jpg
I thought about adding the image to the page since it looks so different than the other models but since I could only find a blurb of information about it; it's not very significant and would not contribute much to the page if I did. I added this so other enthusiast of the P-47 can take a look and see what the aircraft looked like.
--Signaleer 07:33, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Aircraft vs tanks

The P-47 destroyed thousands of tanks, locomotives, and parked aircraft, and tens of thousands of trucks and other vehicles .

That is a myth. While airpower was very effective at destroying soft vehicles like trucks locomotives, thus "killing" the logictics and separating tanks from the needed gas, spare parts, repair crews and equiqment, airpower was lousy at directly killing tanks (see for example Tony Williams' book "Rapid Fire"). From the time the P-47 reached the ETO until the end of the war there were not even 1000 tanks destryoed by the whole airpower of the allied forces so how could the P-47s kill "thousands" of tanks? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.202.49.148 (talk • contribs)

Apparently Mr. Williams have never heard of the Il-2 - anon

The Eastern front was not part of the ETO - the western allies European Theatre of Operations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.144.137.3 (talk) 20:20, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

The idea of machine gun bullets bouncing up through the floor of tanks does not pass the common sense test. Here are some reasons why.

- The best US .50 cal AP round of the day, the M2 AP round, when fired from the M2 HB, could penetrate only 19mm of RHA under optimal conditions (i.e., 0 degree angle of impact, direct fire. at 500m). The M8 API was even worse, at just 16mm penetration.

- HOWEVER, the P47 was armed NOT with the M2 HB, but the M2 Aircraft Basic, with a barrel 7 inches shorter and a lower muzzle velocity. Meaning worse penetration performance from these rounds.

- Ground attack fighters almost always attacked from the flanks (for sound tactical reasons involving survival) - which meant the bullets would have to penetrate the roadwheels en route to their ricochet. See the overlapping design of the Pzkw V's roadwheels, or the close-set road wheels of the Pzkw4. This would quadruple, quintiple - or more - the armor that would need to be penetrated to pull off this trick

- Ricochets off hard surfaces almost always come off the surface at a much more shallow angle than that with which they strike (that's a phenomenom that's been essential to gunnery since the early 19th century). So . . . a fighter in a 30 degree dive will have bullets ricocheting at about 20 degrees or less, which means a strike on the bottom hull at about a 70 degree angle of incidence from the perpendicular. Even the most casual observe should realize it isn't going to penetrate armor plate at this angle, especially since it couldn't first even penetrate asphalt at a better angle with higher velocity.

- It should be obvious also that the act of ricocheting does two other things: 1) It reduces bullet velocity significantly, and 2) it distorts the bullets shape. Both of these points radically reduce the penetrating capability of the 'bounching bullets.'

- All of this combines to make it clear that a bouncing bullet could not even penetrate the 10mm armor thickness of the hull bottom of a Pzkw IV under the conditions inherent to the myth (plus the thickness of the road wheels). And it certainly wouldn't penetrate the bottom 16mm armor of the Pzkw III and Pzkw V.

- Finally, I have yet to find any single ground source that verifies such an occurance. No ground-validated BDA. No Ordnance materiel vulnerability survey. No Ordnance technical report. Nothing. All we have are unsubstantiated claims which all trace back to pilots - who, by the way - were in pretty poor positions to discern something so subtle. Footnote 28 is merely the warmed over uncited comment made in the original WWII USAAF post war history - totally lacking substantiation. And footnote 30 merely repeats the same claim, this time disingenously linking a comment from LTG Collins to it, which comment did not support the bouncing bullet myth.

Lacking an on-site, on the ground verification of even a single incident of such an event, there is no reason to include it in this article. Recomment this section be rewritten to eliminate the bullets-through-a-tank's-bottom silliness. It's merely a recounting of a hoary old war story with no credibility. 71.41.26.194 (talk) 01:12, 27 September 2009 (UTC) Edited 71.41.26.194 (talk) 01:15, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

The warning call of Achtung, Jabos was because of the personal damage a 50 caliber bullet could to a soldier on the ground, not because of its effectiveness against armored fighting vehicles. The only thing that the Thunderbolt could reliably do against a tank was drop a bomb or loose some rockets. Machine gun bullets weren't at all effective against hard targets. Binksternet (talk) 07:04, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Dude, the top armour of the Panzer IV is 10 mm. A .50 penetrates it like butter with a laser sabre. Anyday. --84.126.10.233 (talk) 10:30, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Du-u-ude, Danny S. Parker in To Win The Winter Sky writes about how the U.S. fighters would strafe German tank columns, go back to their base and report great amounts of damage. The Germans would not, however, suffer much damage at all to tanks, only to soft-skinned vehicles. Your butter and laser comment doesn't mesh with actual battle experience. Binksternet (talk) 14:51, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Ruptured control surfaces???

"The fabric-covered control surfaces also tended to rupture at high altitudes due to the air trapped in them." Fabric-covered surfaces are vented with drain holes (go take a look at the bottom trailing edge of any fabric covered control surface on any production airplane--homebuilts don't count, though theirs should be vented also, sometimes they aren't) so as not to trap moisture. If the fabric surfaces were rupturing due to trapped air, all that needed to be done would be to open the vent holes, not change the production line (which is time-consuming & costly) to put metal skin on the surfaces. The Jug was losing fabric because of high-speed airloads during dives peculiar to the airframe (causing a phonomenon which has been described as "ballooning," but not because of trapped air) & the fix, which also increased severely deficient high-speed control effectiveness, was to make those production line changes to metal-covered surfaces.192.100.70.210 (talk) 11:15, 5 December 2007 (UTC)CBsHellcat

The A-10 is NOT the modern day equivalent to the P-47

The A-10 was designed as a dedicated ground attack aircraft, the P-47 was made foremost as a fighter and performed ground attack very well. But dogfighting from the deck all the way up to 30,000ft was what it was there for, and thats something the A-10 could only dream of.

Saying the A-10 and 47 are the same only spreads ignorance and since the job of Misplaced Pages is to spread knowledge perhaps we could get this "Bzuk" character to allow an edit clearly stating that the A-10 is in fact NOT the modern day equivalent of the P-47.

If there is any WW2 "A-10" then its the Il-2 Sturmovik —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.97.76.213 (talk) 20:45, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

While the P-47 was not designed as a ground-attack aircraft, there were elements of its design that made it highly suitable to the role, such as its built-in toughness and survivability. There is no doubt that the P-47 was a success in this role due to these and other factors. The word "equivalent" has been changed, so hopefully we can move on from this issue. By the way, Bzuk is a well-respected editor within WP:AIR, and even though I sometimes disagree with him, he is a good researcher. - BillCJ (talk) 05:19, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Besides, the original statement was not even mine, I was merely reacting to an editor's arbitary and unattributed revisions, bringing them back to the former uncorrected state is the normal process. The rest is "water off a duck's back." FWiW Bzuk (talk) 11:54, 28 April 2008 (UTC).

For the same reason, I just changed the opening sentence regarding the size and weight, which used to read "(except for the Douglas Aircraft Company A-1 Skyraider, which was slightly heavier, and flew from the 1940s through 1970s)". The A-1 was definitely a ground attack aircraft by design while the P-47 was a fighter with good ground attack capabilities. -- Bdentremont (talk) 20:11, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Post war service in Cuba

One of the real combat uses that the Thunderbolt had after WWII was its role as ground attack airplane in the Cuban Air Force during the fight with Castro's guerrilla warefare groups. I think this should be included in the article as well.

Ammo load data missing, unit cost discrepancy

It would be nice if we could have the ammo load out per gun, as on the P-38 page and others. I don't have a source which states the ammo load, but IIRC from an episode of Wings it was 500 rounds per gun. Would someone please verify with a source and make the appropriate edit in the specs section? Also the current article states unit cost as $85,000 in 1945 dollars at the top of the article in the stat box and $83,000 in 1945 dollars in text at the bottom of the article. These numbers should obviously agree. Hardwarefreak (talk) 09:39, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Rotational speed of Turbosupercharger

The information of 60,000 revolutions per minute of the P-47's turbosupercharger was completely wrong, so I modified it. It´s very unlike that a first generation ball bearing equipped turbo charger of large diameter was capable of that speed. I've added a reference and link to a 1943 paper from General Electric explaining the operation of the turbosupercharger they produced for the vast majority of such equipped airplanes during WWII. Notice there's an information (just a curiosity) on that link citing the ball bearing rotation around its axle of 60,000 rpm. This number cannot be confused with turbosupercharger axle speed (21,300 rpm). Roberto R MOLA 12 February 2009 1432UTC —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.62.205.240 (talk) 14:33, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Handling Characteristics

The article states the P47 was known to have a "very good" roll rate. This contradicts every other source I've read; other sources--and the flight models in various PC flight sims, not, I suppose that those are known for great accuracy--state that the P47 accelerated well, was very fast and had outstanding acceleration up above 30,000 feet, and accellerated really well in a dive, and was a very stable gun platform, but otherwise was in no way maneuverable. It rolled slowly ("about like a 747" according to at least one source), turned slowly (as one might expect from its extremely high wing loading), and its climb rate was mediocre until the new propeller design was added late in the war; the new propeller design improved its climb performance from poor to average.

Somewhere, I cannot remember where, I read that the P-47 became relatively nimble at very high altitude. Not more nimble, but more nimble than other fighters. Perhaps its roll rate at angels 30 turned out to be better than its competition. Binksternet (talk) 06:42, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Robert S. Johnson (27 kills-all fighters) mentions in his book "Thunderbolt" the excellent rate of roll of the P-47 and how it enabled him to shoot down more than one German fighter. He mentions in one passage that the enemy pilot probably thought he had turned inside him. Johnson was also full of praise about the new propeller, describing how he out climbed a Spitfire that had soundly beat him in an earlier encounter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.32.20.166 (talk) 15:38, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh yeah. Some of the Allies thought that everything the US did in WWII was "late in the war". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.32.20.166 (talk) 15:52, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

P-47 in Italia, error

In the italian book F-47D Thunderbolt of Nicola Malizia (IBN Editore) : It says 107 F-47D delivered between December 1950 and March 1951 divided in 2 stormi and 6 gruppi. 23 lost between January 1951 and August 1954, they were known Turandot name of an executioner of the French Revolution because of their high rate of accidents. http://fr.wikipedia.org/Utilisateur:L%27amateur_d%27a%C3%A9roplanes —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.133.45.96 (talk) 20:28, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

P-47N The statement "A total of 15,686 Thunderbolts of all types were built, making it second most produced American fighter of all times—after the 16,766 P-51 Mustangs." is incorrect. It should read 'A total of 15,686 Thunderbolts of all types were built, making it the most produced American fighter of all times. The P-51 Mustang at 15,486 was the second most produced.' These figures are from various sources and specifically the book 'America's Hundred-Thousand' by Francis H. Dean, ISBN 0-7643-0072-5 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.168.144.134 (talk) 15:09, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Can someone confirm these numbers from the source mentioned? cherkash (talk) 08:27, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Role

Quote from the article until a few seconds ago: "It had eight .50-caliber machine guns, four per wing. When fully loaded the P-47 could weigh up to eight tons. A modern-day counterpart in that role, the A-10 Thunderbolt II, takes its name from the P-47."

So now tell me, which part does the "in that role" refer to? --91.10.41.53 (talk) 16:04, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

From the sentence before that says proved especially adept at ground attack. MilborneOne (talk) 16:20, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

So it refer across three sentences, two of which make no mention of it? --91.10.41.53 (talk) 16:23, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

There is no catering to the drive-by editing faction and the type of edit comments and examples of disruptive edits that were recently made, will lead to the inevitable blocking of this IP. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 16:34, 7 August 2011 (UTC).

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