Word: thunderbolts
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...fighter plane-of-the-year is headed for quantity production. Republic Aviation Corp.'s sleek brute of the substratosphere, the P-47 Thunderbolt (TIME, Jan. 12), has released its design to other manufacturers. That much, and no more. Army censorship allowed Republic to announce last week in its annual statement to stockholders...
...airmen who have flown the Thunderbolt, a slick-handling job for all its weight (around 13,500-lb., about the same as an old Ford trimotor transport), this was news, good & hot. At Republic's Long Island plant, P-47 was already in production. But if the heavily armed and armored fighter is to do the job the Air Forces says it can, more room for growth is needed than there is in Republic's big, spanking-new plant...
Pleased as anyone at the Air Forces' recognition of P-47's good qualities was the Thunderbolt's father, a quiet, wiry onetime Russian Army artillerist named Alexander Kartveli. In the great group effort of aviation design, many a man who has put new craft in the air has escaped public attention. One such is 45-year-old Designer Kartveli...
...Thunderbolt is a big fighter. It has a wing span of 41 ft., is comparable in weight to the two-engined, Allison-powered Lockheed P-38 (13,500 lb.). It is pulled through the air by a four-bladed propeller with a diameter of more than twelve feet, is "heavily armored and bristling with large-and small-caliber guns...
Built on Long Island, the Thunderbolt is a lineal descendant of "Sascha" Seversky's P35 pursuit ship of 1937. Before the big rush of U.S. rearmament, Seversky's stockholders kicked out their mercurial president, thoroughly reorganized the company. But when the heat was really put on by the U.S. Army Air Forces last May, Republic Aviation Corp. (the new name) decided that it needed a big-league production man at its controls...