Flying Thunderbolt

Up out of the dark midden of censorship OEM popped its head long enough for one brief, welcome word: the Republic P47 (Thunderbolt), fastest single-engined plane in the world, was about ready for quantity production.

The P-47, powered by a 2,000-h.p. Pratt & Whitney air-cooled engine, has a high speed of more than 400 m.p.h. in level flight, has done an incredible 680 in a dive.* Although it had been widely publicized, before Pearl Harbor, as a definitive U.S. answer to the need of high-altitude fighters, P-47's altitude performance was not mentioned by OEM, therefore could not be mentioned by the press. But OEM did give other details:

> The 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.

The man they picked (reputedly at the Army's suggestion) was a crack production man named Ralph Shepard Damon, who once bossed Curtiss-Wright's factory at St. Louis. Relaxed, good-humored Ralph Damon was vice president of American Airlines, had already played the biggest part in piling up a crack operations record for the U.S.'s biggest air transportation company. To get Damon, Republic had to promise to give him back to American when peace came. But as long as war lasts, 44-year-old Ralph Damon will turn out Thunderbolts like an equable Vulcan who wastes no time in rages.

* High diving speed is not conclusive evidence of high speed in level flight. What it does show is bulldog strength of construction, effectively streamlined design.

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