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REPUBLIC P-47D-30-RA THUNDERBOLT by THE ENIGMATIC TRAVELER

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Thunderbolt: the dictionary defines it as "a flash of lightning accompanied by thunder" and it aptly describes the P-47 during World War II. Thunderbolt pilots flew into battle with the thundering roar of a 2000-horsepower radial engine and the deadly flash of eight .50 caliber machine guns. This combination of a robust, reliable engine and heavy armament made the Thunderbolt successful. U. S. Army Forces (AAF) commanders considered it one of the three premier American fighter aircraft, alongside the North American P-51 Mustang and the Lockheed P-38 Lightning (see NASM collection for both aircraft). In the history of aviation, Americans built more P-47s than any other American fighter airplane.

A design history of the Thunderbolt begins in 1935, when the predecessor to Republic Aviation, the Seversky Aircraft Corporation, won an Army Air Corps fighter design competition with an airplane designated the P-35. Alexander Kartveli, Seversky chief designer, used a distinctive semi-elliptical wing plan-form on the P-35 and all the models that followed including the P-47. Kartveli improved on the P-35 with incrementally more powerful engines equipped with superchargers and these airplanes were designated the XP-41 and the P-43 Lancer. The XP-47A was to have been another modest evolutionary step, but aerial combat reports coming back from Europe in 1940 indicated the need for a breakthrough design.

Republic proposed a fighter never seen before nor hardly imagined. It was to be the largest single-engine fighter airplane built and flown by any nation during World War II and Kartveli armed it with the heaviest armament of any fighter yet built, eight .50 caliber machine guns. The designer also proposed using the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engine, the largest air-cooled radial available. To make the airplane as fast as possible at high altitude, Kartveli designed a turbo-supercharger system that fit inside the aft fuselage of the big fighter. This was a particularly complex design challenge. Because of the importance of smooth airflow inside several hundred feet of ducting that connected the supercharger, near the tail, with the engine in the nose, the turbo air duct system was designed first, and then the rest of the aircraft was made to fit around it. Ducting filled nearly the entire belly of the XP-47B. After the aircraft became operational and several crashes occurred, post-crash analysis revealed that these ducts formed a safety cushion between the pilot and the ground.

The Army was impressed with the new design and ordered 171 P-47Bs. On May 6, 1941, the XP-47B made its first flight but Republic needed nearly two more years of testing and refining before the Thunderbolt was ready for combat. Upon arrival in England in December 1942, pilots greeted the P-47 with mixed emotions. Many fighter pilots were accustomed to more nimble and lightweight fighters such as the Supermarine Spitfire, Hawker Hurricane. Pilots of the 4th Fighter Group, Eighth Air Force, first took the Thunderbolt into combat. The fighter weighed more than twice as much as the Spitfires many men had flown previously, so someone nicknamed the aircraft 'Juggernaut,' a fitting moniker that was soon shortened simply to the Jug.

Early combat sorties, first flown in April 1943, revealed that the Thunderbolt could out-dive all opposing fighters-a definite advantage in aerial combat. The P-47 could also absorb tremendous battle damage and continue to fly, and the eight .50 caliber machine guns that Kartveli installed gave it the greatest projectile throw-weight of any U. S. fighter that served in World War II, except for the Northrop P-61 Black Widow night fighter. However, initial operational experience revealed problems with the engine, radio, landing gear, range and rate of climb. The first three difficulties were soon sorted out but rate of climb was not dramatically improved until December when new broad-chord "paddle-blade" propellers. Range limitations plagued the P-47 as long as it served in the European Theater. In the Pacific, Republic solved the range problem when the firm introduced the P-47N in April 1945 with a completely redesigned wing that held more fuel. The 'N model could fly more than 3,220 km (2,000 miles) and escort Boeing B-29 Superfortresses (see NASM collection) attacking the Japanese home islands.

During the war, the P-47 underwent many other modifications to improve its combat efficiency. The P-47D model featured water injection to boost engine power, more powerful versions of the R-2800 engine, increased fuel capacity, and a "bubble" canopy for less-restricted visibility from the cockpit. Through Lend-Lease, 247 Jugs went to the British and 103 to the Soviet Union. The Brazilians flew the type in combat in the Italian Theater and in the Pacific, the Mexican 201st Fighter Squadron flies Thunderbolts in the Philippines.

Of the 15,683 P-47s built, about two-thirds reached overseas commands. A total of 5,222 were lost-1,723 in accidents not related to combat. The Jug flew more than half a million missions and dropped more than 132 thousand tons of bombs. Thunderbolts were lost at the exceptionally low rate of 0.7 per cent per mission and Jug pilots achieved an aerial kill ratio of 4.6:1. In the European Theater, P-47 pilots destroyed more than 7,000 enemy aircraft, more than half of them in air-to-air combat. They destroyed the remainder on very dangerous ground attack missions.

In fact, the Thunderbolt was probably the best ground-attack aircraft fielded by the United States. From D-Day, the invasion of Europe launched June 8, 1944, until VE day on May 7, 1945, pilots flying the Thunderbolt destroyed the following enemy equipment:

86,000 railway cars

9,000 locomotives

6,000 armored fighting vehicles

68,000 trucks

The last Jug left the Air National Guard in 1954, but many other countries operated them for some years after that.

The National Air and Space Museum (NASM) Thunderbolt is a P-47D-30-RA, Army Air Forces (AAF) serial number 44-32691. The AAF accepted it on October 27, 1944, and delivered the aircraft to Godman Field, Kentucky. The AAF operated the airplane on the U. S. East Coast primarily as an aerial gunnery trainer. On January 27, 1946, the AAF transferred it from the active inventory to the U. S. Army Air Forces Museum in Dayton, Ohio, and then to the National Air Museum (now NASM) along with other military aircraft. The Smithsonian lent the aircraft to Republic Aviation for restoration and display, and to help the company celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first flight of the P-47. Subsequently, NASM displayed the aircraft at its own Paul Garber Facility in Suitland, Maryland, before lending it to the Museum of Flight at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia.

The P-47 has returned to the museum and is now on display in the National Air and Space Museum, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.

1:72 Nakajima A6M2-N ('Rufe') of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) Air Service, 81st Kokutai; Aleutian Islands, 1943 (modified LS Model kit) by Dizzyfugu

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The kit and its assembly:

This is a real world model, despite the weird looks (see below), and an entry for the Arawasi blog's "Japanese Aircraft Online Model Contest 005 - Japanese Seaplanes & Flying Boats" contest in summer 2017. Even though whifs were allowed to enter, I used the opportunity to build a kit I had originally bought for a few bucks and stashed away in the donor bank: a vintage LS Model Nakajima A6M2-N.

The mould dates back to 1963(!), and the kit was re-issued several times, also under the ARII label. You get a tiny box, with only two sprues moulded in a pale baby blue, and the number of parts is minimal. It's truly vintage and pretty toylike at first sight. Consequently, you have to face some real old-school issues, e. g. moulded markings for the roundels on the wings, general mediocre fit of anything and lots of sinkholes and flash. Then there are toylike solutions like the single-piece propeller or separate, moveable ailerons with bulging joints.

The cockpit interior is non-existent, too: there's just a blank place for a dashboard (to be cut out from the printed BW instructions!), and a spindly pilot figure which is held in mid air by some pins. Furthermore, the kit was designed to take a small electric motor in the nose (sold separately) to drive the propeller. Wires, as well as respective internal ducts, and an AA battery holder are included.

Sounds scary? Well, maybe, if you just build it OOB. But all these flaws should not keep the ambitious modeler away because the LS Model kit is (still) a sound basis to start from, even though and by today's standards, it is certainly not a match-winner for a rivet counter-esque competition.

‘For its age and the typical solutions of its time, it is actually surprisingly good: you get very fine engraved surface details (more delicate than many contemporary moulds!), a pretty thin, three-piece clear (yet blurry) canopy and, as a bonus to the elevons, separate flaps – a unique detail I have never come across before! Proportions are IMHO good, even though the cowling looks a bit fishy and the engravings are rather soft and shallow. Anyway, on the exterior, there’s anything you can ask for to be found, and as another bonus the kit comes with a beaching trolley, which makes display and diorama fitting easier.

Thanks to the kit's simplicity, the build in itself was pretty straightforward and simple. Cleaning the parts and checking fit was the biggest issue. Upon gluing the old styrene showed signs of serious reaction to the dissolving effect of modern glue: it took ages for the material to cure and become hard again for further work!? Weird…

The many sinkholes and overall displacements were corrected with some NC putty/PSR, the protruding elevon/flap joints sanded away as good as possible, and due to the wobbly nature of the kit’s styrene I added blobs of 2C putty inside of the wing halves as stabilizers.

Some mods and improvements were made, though. After cleaning the OOB propeller from tons of flash the piece turned out to be pretty usable, and it was put on a metal axis. A styrene tube adapter was added behind the relatively flat engine dummy, so that the prop can spin freely – for the later beauty pics, because no CG effect beats IMHO the real thing.

A cockpit interior was created from scratch and donor parts, using the new Airfix A6M model's cockpit as benchmark. It’s not an exact replica, because not much would later be visible, but I wanted, as a minimum, “something” inside. A better pilot figure was used, too, and strapped to the new seat with thin strips of adhesive masking tape as seatbelts.

Under the wings, the hardpoints were simulated with some bits of styrene and wire as shackles, but left empty Under the stabilizer fin I added a lug(?), made from thin wire, too.

The elevons were fixed in place, the seams to the wings filled with white glue in order to conceal the gaps as good as possible. The movable flaps remained, though, adding life to the model. The dolly was also taken more or less OOB, since it fits well. I just improved it with some sinkhole fillings and some other details, including cushions on the float stabilizers, made from paper tissue soaked with thinned white glue, and a towing bar.

Painting and markings:

The reason why I settled for an A6M2-N is mostly the weird paint scheme which can be applied, while still being a real world model: a lilac livery!

As far as I could find out, the A6M2-Ns initially carried an all-over IJN Grey livery, which was later, in late 1942, modified with dark green upper sides for a better concealment on the ground, and the Hinomaru received white edges for better contrast.

Anyway, during the Aleutian campaign and more or less in between these two major standards, several aircraft must have received a special camouflage with lilac upper surfaces, and this model depicts such a machine, based on various profiles but no color picture as reliable reference.

The sources I consulted, as well as pictures of finished A6M2-N models, show a wide variety of shades and paint scheme layouts, though. Upper colors range from pale pink through more or less bright shades of purple to a pale, rusty-reddish brown (maybe primer?), while the undersides show a wide range of greys or even light blue. Some depictions of Aleutian A6M2-Ns as profile or model even show a uniform wraparound scheme! Choice is yours, obviously...

Because of the corny information basis, I did my personal interpretation of the subject. I based my livery more or less on a profile by Michele Marsan, published in Aerei Modelismo Anno XII (March 1991). The unit information was taken from there, too – the only source that would provide such a reference.

My idea behind the livery and the eventual finish was that the machine once was fully painted in IJN Grey. Then, the violet upper color was added in the field (for whatever reason?), resulting in a slightly shaggy look and with the light grey shining through here and there in areas of higher wear, e. g. at the leading edges, cockpit area and some seams.

Painting started with an initial coat of aluminum under the floats, around the cockpit and on the leading edges. Then the undersides and some areas of the upper surfaces were painted with IJN grey. The latter is an individual mix of Humbrol 90 (Beige Green/RAF Sky) and a bit of 155 (Olive Drab, FS 34087). On top of that I added a thin primer layer of mauve (mix of ModelMaster’s Napoleonic Violet and Neutral Grey, Humbrol 176) on the still vacant upper surfaces – both as a preparation for the later weathering treatments (see below).

The following, basic lilac tone comes from Humbrol’s long-gone "Authentics" enamel line. The tin is probably 30 years old, but the content is still alive (and still has a distinctive, sour stench…)! I cannot identify the tone anymore with certainty, but I guess that it is 'HJ 4: Mauve N 9', one of the line’s Japanese WWII tones which was later not carried over to the standard tones, still available today.

Anyway, the color is a dull, rather greyish violet, relatively dark (a bit like RAF Ocean Grey), and it fits well as a camouflage tone on this specific model. Since there’s no better alternative I could think of except for an individual mix or garish, off-the-rack pop art tones, I went with it.

After overall basic painting was done and thoroughly cured, weathering started with a careful wet sand paper treatment, removing the salt grain masks and revealing some of the lower IJN Grey and aluminum layers. While this appears messy, I found that the result looks more realistic than artificial weathering applied as paint effects on top of the basic paint.

The engine cowling was painted separately, with a mix of black and a little dark blue. The propeller received an aluminum spinner (Humbrol’s Matt Aluminum Metallizer), while the blades received aluminum front sides (Revell acrylics), and red brown (Humbrol 160) back sides. Two thin, red stripes decorate the propeller tips (Decals, left over from an AZ Model Ki-78, IIRC).

As a standard procedure, the kit received a light wash with thinned black ink, revealing the engraved panel lines, plus some post-shading in order to emphasize panels and add visual contrast and ‘drama’.

Decals and markings were improvised and come from the spares box, since I did not trust the vintage OOB decals - even though they are in so far nice that the sheet contains any major marking as well as a full set of letter so that an individual tail code could be created. Anyway, the model's real world benchmark did not carry any numeric or letter code, just Hinomaru in standard positions and a horizontal, white-and-red stripe on the fin.

The roundels actually belong to a JSDAF F-4EJ, some stencils come from a leftover Hobby Boss A6M sheet. The fin decoration was created with generic decal sheet material (TL Modellbau). Similar stuff was also used for the markings on the central float, as well as for the yellow ID markings on the inner wings' leading edges. I am just not certain whether the real aircraft carried them at all? But they were introduced with the new green upper surfaces in late 1942, so that they appear at least plausible. Another argument in this marking‘s favor is that it simply adds even more color to the model!

The cockpit interior was painted in a light khaki tone (a mix of Humbrol 159 and 94), while the flaps' interior was painted with Aodake Iro (an individual mix of acrylic aluminum and translucent teal paint). Lacking good reference material, the beaching trolley became IJA Green, with some good weathering with dry-brushed silver on the edges and traces of rust here and there (the latter created with artist acrylics.

Close to the (literal) finish line, some soot and oil stains were added with graphite and Tamiya's 'Smoke', and the kit finally received a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri); to the varnish on the engine cover a bit of gloss varnish was added, for a sheen finish.