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REPUBLIC P-47D THUNDERBOLT
GRUMMAN F6F-5 HELLCAT
The FHC’s Republic P-47D Thunderbolt served in the United States and Brazil before its full restoration. Today, the rare survivor periodically takes to the skies to dazzle Fly Day audiences.
The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt and Grumman F6F Hellcat were fighters cut from the
same cloth. Both were designed in Long Island, New York, and the pair represented the
pinnacle of American industrial might. Built around the same big, air-cooled Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engine, the duo were generally the same size and shape, one serving the US Army and the other the navy.
Made solid, heavy, and powerful, the two fighters were well known for their ability to absorb great punishment and still return home. The two planes dominated the skies by
taking on aerial foes and made life miserable for Axis ground forces during the last years of the war.
The P-47 Thunderbolt came first. The US military was influenced by fighter designs
like the Spitfire and Bf 109, and the army needed better aircraft to take on potential enemies in air-to-air combat. When Republic’s Russian-born designer Alexander Kartveli met with army air corps officials in June 1940, he came away with an intimidating set of requirements. They wanted speed, heavy armament, great protection (armor and self-sealing fuel tanks), and exceptional range. It was clear that nothing Republic had in the air, or even on the drawing board, would do.
The plane that Kartveli and his crew designed was a large, heavy interceptor. The XP-
47B made its maiden flight on May 6, 1941. The heart of the new machine was its Double Wasp engine, which had been used in the Vought F4U Corsair naval fighter a year before.
The eighteen-cylinder behemoth made the Corsair America’s first single-engine fighter
capable of flying at more than four hundred miles per hour.
Turning to chase a ferry boat across Puget Sound, FHC pilot “Bud” Granley puts the Thunderbolt through its paces during a test flight not far from the Flying Heritage Collection’s home at Paine Field.
While the R-2800 was the heart of the Thunderbolt, the turbo supercharger was its
lungs. This device, located behind the wings, collected and compressed lighter high-
altitude air and then fed the engine denser, sea-level-like air for better performance at higher altitudes.
The lines of the P-47 were scribed around this union between its power plant and turbo supercharger. More accurately, the Thunderbolt got its “jug” shape from the maze of air ducts in its belly that funneled air from nose to tail and back again. The turbo supercharger was driven by exhaust gases from the engine. Clean, cool air was scooped from a large
opening under the engine. Some of this air was used to cool oil, while the rest was
compressed, then cooled, then sent back to the R-2800 in the nose. Each function required a complex duct system to move air through the fuselage.
In service, pilots and ground crew liked the duct system in the belly of the fighter
because it protected a flyer in hard, wheels-up landings, and the “crush zone” protected vital parts of the aircraft, allowing it to be repaired quickly.
The other thing that pilots adored about the P-47 was its heavy complement of guns.
The designers were able to shoehorn eight .50-caliber guns into the wings by creating an ingenious mechanical system to compress the landing gear when stowed. This fit the
needs of a new era of air-to-air combat that stressed incredible punching power to
violently and quickly smash enemy aircraft.
However, American pilots did not immediately accept the first P-47s when they first
arrived in Europe in April 1943. The Thunderbolt, or as flyers called it, “the Jug,” was a monster. Used to nimble planes like the Spitfire, the P-47 seemed like a delivery truck.
The size of the P-47, though, allowed it to fly much farther than a Spitfire. The Jug
would be used most often in the early days as an escort plane, despite having been built as an interceptor. The P-47 could carry 305 gallons of fuel in the fuselage along with external drop tanks, too. This fuel load allowed the P-47 escorts to stay with the bombers and battle Luftwaffe interceptors for far longer than Spitfires.
When long-endurance Mustangs arrived on the scene to escort American bombers,
many P-47s switched roles again. The timing could not have been better. As Allied troops stormed ashore in France, Jugs took on the job of ground attack. The P-47 was uniquely suited for the task—burly airframe, heavy guns, and a durable engine.
As the FHC’s P-47 turns for home and exposes its belly, one can see the outlet for the plane’s turbo supercharger just forward of the fighter’s tail wheel. The heavy piece of equipment was located here to give the Jug better balance and to maximize the pilot’s view from the cockpit.
Above all, the Thunderbolt was known to be almost supernaturally tough. Tales of Jugs
that had buzz-sawed through the trees, smashed into the side of a German truck, or came home with an engine cylinder completely shot away were often more truth than fiction.
Pilots grew to love the P-47, because it nearly always gave them a fighting chance to make it back to base.
The FHC P-47D-40-RA Thunderbolt was built in Evansville, Indiana, in the last
months of World War II. According to the Army Air Forces Statistical Digest, the US
Government acquired the plane for around $83,001.00.
Evansville was the second Republic factory building P-47s, the other site being
Farmingdale in Long Island, New York. This second factory was built inland, which was
thought to be out of range of even the boldest Nazi bombing attacks. The first P-47s left the Evansville factory as the building was still being constructed in mid-1942. In total, the Indiana plant built 6,242 of the 15,683 Thunderbolts produced.
The monstrous snout of the Thunderbolt sometimes gets in the way. On the ground, a Jug pilot has no chance of seeing anything directly in front of him for a hundred yards or more. A mechanic would often sit on the wing of the fighter, giving a flyer a second pair of eyes until right before takeoff.
The Republic P-47 was a staggeringly large aircraft. Here, Maj. Walter Beckham, ace of the 353rd Fighter Group, poses with his trusty Jug. Noses of early P-47s were often painted white to avoid confusion with German radial-engine Fw 190 fighters.
The FHC aircraft was delivered to the army and accepted on June 27, 1945. It was
almost immediately put into storage. While the plane was at Tinker Army Air Field in
Oklahoma, the US Army Air Forces became the US Air Force. As well, the Thunderbolt’s
designation changed from P-47, for “Pursuit,” to F-47, for “Fighter.”
From 1948 to 1953, the Thunderbolt served Air National Guard and Strategic Air
Command units in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Kentucky. By
April 1953, the FHC’s F-47 had been moved back into storage, presumably for eventual
transfer to a Latin American country. The plane was, in fact, acquired by Brazil’s Força Aérea Brasileira (FAB) in September 1953.
Brazilian pilots had flown P-47s since combat in Italy during World War II. By early
1952, around fifty-one P-47/F-47s had been supplied to Brazil through Lend-Lease
agreements. The FHC aircraft came in a batch of twenty-four additional planes. The
fighter was assigned to the 2° Esquadrano do 5° Grupo de Aviacao (2nd squadron of the 5th group), based in Natal in the northeastern part of the country. The group was more of a training unit than a fighter squadron—Brazil had acquired Gloster Meteors that had taken over the marquee job of frontline defense.
CAPACIOUS COCKPIT
While the size of the average man stayed about the same, the size of the average
fighter plane and cockpit increased during World War II. This image shows the
spacious working space in the FHC’s P-47 Thunderbolt. It is not surprising that the
interior of America’s biggest single engine fighter of the war had the largest cockpit, too. It was so commodious, in fact, that it caused pilots of all nations to take notice.
Pilots who transitioned from flying Spitfires in RAF Eagle Squadrons were shocked
by the size of the plane. Compared to flying in the cozy cockpit of Supermarine’s
bantam defensive fighter, the inside of the Jug seemed disturbingly roomy. British
observers noted wryly that one might slip off the seat, fall to the cockpit floor, and really get hurt. The Germans were puzzled by the Thunderbolt’s interior, as well,
when they inspected a captured P-47. Luftwaffe Gen. Adolf Galland wrote that the
cockpit was big enough to walk around in. Other German pilots, used to the comfy if-
not-cramped cockpit of the Bf 109, felt that everything was out of reach. Another
speculated that a pilot might be able to dodge bullets simply by loosening his shoulder straps and leaning to one side or the other as he flew.
Both Allied and Axis pilots were startled by the size of the Thunderbolt’s spacious cockpit. Compared to the cramped quarters of the Bf 109 or Spitfire, the inside of a Jug seemed like a ballroom. Most flyers found the extra space oddly disturbing.
After service in a handful of other units, the plane was allotted to the Centro
Tecnológico de Aeronáutica at São José dos Campos in 1960. This school used the now-outdated fighter for ground instruction. Later, the plane was preserved at Campo Grande in the west-central region of Brazil, and then was transferred back to Natal where it was seen and photographed while displayed outdoors in 1986. The plane was one of around
nine F-47s preserved as monuments, or in museums around Brazil. It was sold to Airplane Sales International of Santa Monica, California, in 1988.
After passing through several owners, a full restoration was begun on the aircraft in
Rialto, California. The job was undertaken by WestPac Restorations co-owned by Bill
Klaers and Alan Wojciak. According to a 1999 Air Classics magazine article, “WestPac has become the leading Thunderbolt restoration shop.”
In July 1998, the FHC purchased the P-47 while work continued. The new owner
required an extremely thorough and airworthy restoration that met exacting original
standards. In a 2005 interview, Klaers told Air Classics about the new developments in the field of aircraft restoration. His comments were probably influenced by his work on this Thunderbolt: “It has become a very serious business with extremely dedicated collectors who are demanding the highest detail and quality of restoration work. One can compare it a bit to all the work that is undertaken on very rare auto restorations. It has gotten to the point where no detail is too small.”
The P-47 was first flown in 2006. Later, the FHC commissioned a paint scheme
consistent with the plane of native Seattleite Ralph C. Jenkins, the commanding officer of the Ninth Air Force’s 510th Fighter Squadron who flew Tallahassee Lassie on 129 combat missions. The nose art and name on the aircraft were inspired by Jenkins’s wife, Tiero.
The aircraft now carries the USAAF serial number of Jenkins’s aircraft, 44-33133, not the plane’s original number, 45-49406.
It is interesting to note that many of the aircraft built in the 460-plus aircraft “batch” of P-47Ds to which the FHC Thunderbolt belongs were eventually preserved in museums.
These planes were available in such large numbers at the end of World War II because
they were built for two battles that never happened: extended combat in Europe through the summer and fall of 1945, and the invasion and occupation of Japan. As a result, many of these very “low [flight] time” aircraft were transferred to air forces in Peru, Chile, and Brazil.
A shot of Lt. Edwin King’s P-47 shows just how hearty a Thunderbolt could be. Hit by antiaircraft fire over Italy, King’s R-2800
engine spit out nearly all of its precious oil but did not let the flyer down. Here, King poses with the oil-soaked fighter that brought him home.
This side shot of the FHC’s P-47 helps illustrate the fighter’s unusual shape. With a series of tubes and ducts running through its belly, the big fighter does look a little like a “Seven-Ton Milk Jug.”
They were saved from US scrap yards and survive today because they were moved out
of North America. At least eleven of the approximately seventy-five P-47 survivors
existing today are from this group of aircraft. They can be seen not only at the FHC, but at museums in Michigan, Ohio, Minnesota, California, Connecticut, England, and Brazil.
In some ways, the Grumman Hellcat was the Thunderbolt’s doppelganger. With the
same engine, same basic size and role, and same general point of origin, the two bruisers were deadly duplicates. But, for all their similarities, there were big differences, too.
The Hellcat was devised as a replacement for the prewar Wildcat naval fighter. While
the Hellcat is often touted as America’s answer to defeating the Japanese Zero, it is
important to note that this “wilder Wildcat” was on drawing boards before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Regardless, it is fair to say that the Zero was the specter haunting the dreams of American naval aircraft designers and aviators even before the fighting began.
When war came to the Pacific, the Wildcat was not often up to the task of taking on the more nimble Zero. Naval aviators had to resort to the Thach Weave, two Wildcats taking on a single Zero, to stay alive in aerial combat. Commander John S. “Jimmy” Thach
himself wrote in one combat report that the Wildcat was “pitifully inferior in climb,
maneuverability, and speed” versus the Zero. The Hellcat would change all that.
Grumman’s new F6F would be bigger, faster, and more powerful than the vaunted
Mitsubishi Zero.
The interior components of an American plane like the P-47 were coated in green (and yellow) paint. The strange stuff is Zinc Chromate—a covering used for corrosion control. The bright colors allowed a factory worker to efficiently see which areas had been coated (and which hadn’t) in an instant.
The FHC’s P-47D carries a painting of Tallahassee Lassie, the wife of pilot Ralph Jenkins. The image was created by 510th Fighter Squadron artist Staff Sgt. Lynn Trank, jokingly considered, “the only indispensable man in the squadron.”
Seattleite Capt. Ralph C. Jenkins poses in the cockpit of one of his P-47 aircraft during World War II. Though he was never hit in combat, his name appeared on the canopy rail of a number of Thunderbolts during his time in the service. Each plane had the same name painted on the cowling—Tallahassee Lassie.
The P-47 is equipped with a K-14 gyroscopic gunsight. In the manual, it is described as “the answer to a poor deflection shooter’s prayer.” The unit worked as a fixed sight or the gyro could be engaged to account for the maneuvers of the Thunderbolt and its prey in aerial combat.
Incorporating the R-2800 engine into the new aircraft design meant building a whole
new airframe. In actuality, the Hellcat wasn’t an improved Wildcat; it was the next
generation of naval fighter. In the process, Grumman listened to naval aviators’ comments and did away with many of the Wildcat’s weaknesses, while keeping its strengths. The
Hellcat’s big engine meant that the Wildcat’s odd, manually operated scissor landing gear had to go. The new, wide-stance, more conventional gear allowed the plane’s Pratt & Whitney to turn a giant thirteen-foot one-inch Hydromatic propeller. Even little things were changed. The Wildcat had aggravating pull handles to charge the plane’s machine
guns. With the Hellcat, a flyer just flipped a switch.
In many respects, the Hellcat was nearly always easy on an aviator. By comparison, the Vought F4U Corsair seemed like a high-strung predator, always ready to turn on its
master. The Hellcat was really a pussycat at heart. For a carrier landing, the Corsair had questionable visibility and wicked stall tendencies. A Hellcat flyer sat high, able to see over the fighter’s massive nose, and the plane had no hidden quirks in the skies or in the landing pattern. The F6F was a big, lovable lug that did what it was asked to do, without complaint.
Of course, operating from carriers, the F6F had folding wings. While many of the
Wildcat’s aggravating characteristics went away, Grumman kept the good ones. The Sto-
Wing concept, initiated by Leroy Grumman himself using a paperclip and eraser as his
model, allowed five “folded” planes to fit into space of two fixed-wing fighters.
Developed for the Wildcat, the system was transferred to the bigger Hellcat.
The first Hellcat flew on June 26, 1942. Amazingly, three months later the fighter was ready for mass production. Fifteen months after that, Grumman had 25,094 employees and had built more than 2,500 Hellcats.
Hellcats went to war on August 31, 1943, over Marcus Island. Quickly, the aircraft
became the dominant fighter in the Pacific by dethroning the once seemingly unbeatable Zero. Beyond tangles with Japanese fighters, the Hellcat earned a reputation as a valuable attack plane. As US forces hopped from island to island and the Japanese air presence
faded, the dependable and versatile Hellcat lugged bombs into the skies to batter enemy airfields and fortifications.
Part of the identification markings on the USS Randolph Hellcats was ailerons painted insignia white. If one looks at the photo closely, the reflection of the photography aircraft can be seen in the glossy sea blue cowling of the Grumman fighter.
As with the P-47 Thunderbolt, the Hellcat could take punishment and dish it out. Flyers sometimes called it the “Aluminum Tank” and joked that Grumman had used steel girders
from New York’s abandoned Second Avenue elevated railroad to make the planes.
In an illustration of how tough the Hellcat was, the navy required Grumman to “drop-
test” a new F6F airframe. Engineers calculated that the nineteen-feet-per-second drop to the pitching deck of a carrier during landing could be replicated with a straight drop of ten feet. They lifted the plane up and let it go. The Hellcat simply bounced to a stop with no ill effects. At the end of the test, Grumman’s engineers decided to have a little fun with their test subject. They winched the plane up to the ceiling in their test facility—twenty-one feet
—and let the plane fall. Again, the burly Hellcat bounced and then settled to the cement floor below, unharmed.
The FHC Hellcat was built in Bethpage, New York, and accepted by the navy on May
17, 1945. It was a F6F-5N night fighter equipped with a radar and special instrumentation.
The plane was assigned to the Carrier Aircraft Service Unit 1 on Ford Island, Pearl
Harbor, Hawaii, from July to September 1945.
In 1945 and 1946, the fighter was in the general pool at Pearl Harbor and Alameda.
Then, the FHC Hellcat went into a period of storage in a blimp hangar at NAS Glynco in Georgia from August 1946 to June 1948.
Through 1950 and 1951, the plane was moved to a Naval Air Reserve Training unit in
New York. After that, the Hellcat was assigned to the Fleet All Weather Training Unit at Barbers Point, Hawaii, from June 1952 to February 1954. Then, there were brief stops in Alameda, Norfolk, and Litchfield Park, in Arizona, before the plane’s conversion to a
drone in 1957.
The FHC’s Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat was miraculously saved from destruction during its years serving as a remote control drone. It is one of just a handful of Hellcats flying in the world today.
Condensation rings stream from the propeller blades of an F6F-3 Hellcat aboard the USS Yorktown in 1943. The image was taken as the Grumman fighters entered combat for the first time, against targets on Marcus Island.
The plane was flown with utility unit VU-3 from Brown Field, California, in 1958, before
spending its final military years with the Research and Development unit at the Naval Air Facility at China Lake.
FHC test pilot Steve Hinton takes the newly restored Grumman fighter to the skies in 2013. The plane was on display for years in the FHC’s hangar before being put back into flying shape by collection staffers. Today it is one of the FHC’s most popular planes.
The FHC Hellcat’s last military flight, under the controls of a pilot named Hemming,
was on October 4, 1961, terminating at Bethpage on Long Island, New York. The fighter
had accumulated 856 hours of flying time while in navy service.
The FHC Hellcat appears to have been the last, or next to last Hellcat used by the navy.
The monthly Allowances and Location of Navy Aircraft shows two remaining Hellcat drones in October 1961 with one “awaiting decision on strike.” The November 1961
report does not list any Hellcats.
The US Naval Aviation Museum (NAM) in Pensacola, Florida, acquired the aircraft as
a gift from Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation on March 15, 1965. NAM stored
the Hellcat, still in the insignia red paint scheme, from China Lake, at Chevalier Field in Pensacola. It is apparent that no restoration work was done at NAM, because the Officer in Charge of the museum, Grover Walker, is on record as requesting a trade for an exhibit-ready Hellcat. The trade was consummated on July 14, 1971, between NAM and three
partners of Aerial Classics of Atlanta. The museum received BuNo 94203 in exchange.
Mike Rettke, the most prominent partner, had the restored aircraft registered as N79863, and he flew it at various air shows, including the EAA at Oshkosh and AirWar74 in
Windsor, Ontario.
In the fall of 1985, Patriots Point and the Yorktown Association purchased the Hellcat
from Aerial Classics for $280,000. It was dedicated to Lt. Cmdr., later Vice Adm., James
“Jimmy” Flatley Jr., the wartime commander of USS Yorktown’s Air Group 5 in October 1985 in a ceremony on the flight deck of the Yorktown—now a floating museum. The aircraft was painted glossy sea blue with Flatley’s markings while displayed on the hangar deck during the period at Patriots Point.
Around 1991, Patriots Point traded the Hellcat in a three-way deal with Black Shadow
Aviation and the Naval Aviation Museum to obtain a nonflying F6F along with the loan of other aircraft. The FHC Hellcat moved quickly to Warbirds of Great Britain Ltd.
Doug Arnold, the owner of Warbirds of Great Britain, had been an avid aviation
collector for approximately twenty-five years when he passed away in November 1992—
barely a year after acquiring the Hellcat. Rumor has it that his collection was disbanded after his death, with the naval aircraft being flown to other places and the rest of the aircraft disassembled, containerized, and dispersed. It appears that the FHC Hellcat was stored in the United States from 1992 to 1996 with a company called Iron Baron
Corporation in Dover, Delaware.
In 1996, Arnold’s son, David, started Flying A Services and hoped to develop an
aviation museum in England. The FHC Hellcat was flown back to England from the
United States via Iceland. This was the last time the plane flew until 2013. The plane’s log reveals a twenty-seven-hour trip from Wichita, Kansas, to North Weald, England, from
August 4 to 8 in 1997. It was stored at North Weald by Flying A Services until purchased by the FHC in late 2000 and shipped to Arlington, Washington.
The FHC’s F6F-5 Hellcat carries the paint scheme of fighter number 32, seen here in a photo taken from the island of the USS
Randolph in 1945.
Near the FHC’s hangars, mechanics conduct a test on the Hellcat’s big R-2800 engine. The same type of Pratt & Whitney power plant was used in the Vought F4U Corsair and Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighters.
The FHC’s Hellcat carries the distinctive “G-symbol” tail of a plane from the USS Randolph. Through many of the last months of the war, US Navy aircraft carried bold white patterns (“geometric symbols”) on their tails to aid in recognition.
That big engine needs an equally large propeller to slice through the air. The Hellcat’s three-bladed Hydromatic is over thirteen feet in diameter. Yellow tips were standard on US warplanes. They help the spinning propeller stay visible to ground crew working around the aircraft.
Leroy Grumman got the idea for the Hellcat’s backwards wing fold from watching birds. He noticed that when a bird lands, its wings fold neatly against its body, not straight up. The Sto-Wing concept keeps the plane’s center of gravity low and allows it to fit in the cramped environs of a carrier’s hangar deck.
A deckhand’s-eye-view of the F6F shows the big plane with its cowl flaps open. The doors on the back of the cowling could be opened or closed by the pilot to allow more or less air into the cowling and over the cylinders of the plane’s air-cooled Pratt &Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp engine.
During 2011 and 2012, the Hellcat went through an extensive IRAN (Inspect and
Repair As Necessary) including an engine rebuild, electrical system and instrumentation restoration, control surface recovering, and painting.
The FHC Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat went into the paint shop on Valentine’s Day in 2013.
The scheme was chosen to honor a local ace: Lt. Reuben H. Denoff flew in the invasion of North Africa, fought with VF-9 in the Pacific, and then joined VF-12, subsequently VBF-12, aboard the aircraft carrier USS Randolph. Denoff finished the war with a total of five confirmed air-to-air victories. Eventually, he settled in Kennewick, Washington and
worked for McDonnell Douglas Laboratories in Richland. He passed away in 1988.
The Hellcat, adorned with the Randolph’s distinctive striped “G-symbol” tail, flew again on March 27, 2013, with Steve Hinton as test pilot.
A Pratt &Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp radial cut-away is often displayed near the FHC’s Hellcat or Thunderbolt to illustrate the monster engine behind some of the best American fighters of the war. This version came from an A-26 Invader attack bomber.
FLYING GUINEA PIGS
The navy had been developing drones since 1936 to perform a variety of tasks
including flight-testing to avoid injury to pilots and use as targets for antiaircraft gunners. After World War II, the navy found itself with a multitude of flyable Hellcats that could be used for the strangest of assignments.
An F6F drone package included the following components: “a control unit, a radio
transmitter modulator, a radio receiver-selector unit, and a relay control unit … and
the stabilization system which includes the P-1K auto-pilot.” The first two items were located on the ground or in a control aircraft while the other items were installed in the drone.
The planes were used in deadly exercises. The first F6Fs were converted in 1946
for the Bikini atom bomb tests—Operation Crossroads. The planes were plunged into
the blast cloud. Those that survived the flight brought back valuable information from places manned aircraft could never safely go.
Other aircraft were used to test new antiaircraft missiles and guns, and, for each
successful test, there was one less Hellcat in the Navy’s inventory. Perhaps the
strangest use of Hellcat drones came during the Korean War, when explosive-loaded
fighters were flown, kamikaze style, into enemy bridges, tunnels, and power plant buildings. Over twelve thousand Hellcats were built, but they are a rare commodity
today, partly because so many of the World War II survivors were used as flying
guinea pigs.
While based at the Naval Ordnance Test Station at China Lake, the FHC’s Hellcat was painted red in order to keep the unpiloted drone easily in sight of its operators. The bright color also helped potential “shooters” to home in on the unmanned aircraft. Luckily, the FHC’s Hellcat survived its days as a target.
In order to cross the Atlantic, many of the Hellcat’s vintage instruments were switched out or discarded to install modern civilian ones. Restorers found that many of the World War II instruments were fairly easy to locate and replace. The toughest to find was the plane’s eight-day clock, which was often pocketed by sailors or scrap men as a valuable souvenir.