Word: p47
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Over a British airfield, Lieut. Ralph Johnson found he could get only one land-ing wheel of his P47 down; a machine-gun bullet from a German fighter had jammed the other. He went back upstairs to think it over, and Lieut. Colonel Hubert Zemke flew up beside him to see what the trouble was. Their radio conversation, recorded in the field control room...
Johnson turned his plane over, flipped out, parachuted safely to the ground. The P47 dived harmlessly, disappeared in a great splash of sea water...
...tricky business-one reason why the plane was delayed in reaching combat. There is no room for an instructor in the cockpit. The pilot is on his own in mastering speeds of 420-plus m.p.h., learning how to pull out of 680-m.p.h. power dives that can hurtle the P47 to safety when its ammunition is exhausted. In early days, many a student pilot forgot that a Thunderbolt can dive a mile in six screeching seconds, needs thousands of feet for the simplest maneuvers...
More to Come. Although the P47 is now being turned out in quantity, the plane still has a long way to fly before the Army will be wholly satisfied. That is one reason why other theaters have yet to report the Thunderbolt in action. It is not as good at dog-fighting as the Spitfire IX, its range is limited, its rate of climb is slow. But engineers are already eying the huge air-cooled motor for an added 300- 400 h.p., to get both faster climb and top speeds not far below 500 m.p.h. If that happens, says...
...battlefield, gunners in U.S. bombers have a new problem of aircraft recognition. On many raids their new fighter escorts are Republic Thunderbolts (P-47s) which have just entered the battle of Europe. And in the swirling confusion of a battle with pursuit planes, the broadnosed, round-bodied P47 can easily be mistaken for the Germans' best fighter: Focke-Wulf's famed...