P-47D

Loadouts: 6400 silver, 4x HVAR Rockets, 7600 silver, 6x HVAR Rockets The Thunderbolt series began in June 1940, when the United States Army Air Corps issued a requirement for a new lightweight fighter design. The most powerful engine at the time, the 2,000 horsepower Pratt & Whitney R-2800-21 Double Wasp 18-cylinder two-row radial, was selected as the starting piece of the P-47 Thunderbolt series; because it was the best engine for achieving the performance and load-carrying demands required by the USAAC. Adapting this massive engine to power a fighter aircraft required a great feat of engineering, but Alexander Kartveli and his team knew that without it, their design could not possibly meet the performance expectations that the USAAC required. A four-bladed 12ft-diameter propeller had to be used to harness the power generated by the R-2800, and Kartveli produced and efficient supercharging duct system that offered the least interrupted airflow, using an unorthodox method of designing this feature first and then building up the fuselage around it. The engine’s huge turbosupercharger was stored internally in the rear fuselage, with the large intake for the air duct mounted beneath the power-plant, together with the oil coolers. Kartveli designed a telescopic landing gear that was nice inches shorter when retracted than when extended so as to make room for the win installation of no fewer than eight .50in machine guns and their ammunition, which when fired imposed immense stress on the aircraft that had to be taken into consideration.

Max Speed: 599 Km/hr

The P-47D-RA (114 built) was the first p-47 model to emerge from the new Evansville, Indiana, plant from December 1942 - RA was the Evansville factory designation. It was essentially similar to the C-5. The D-1-RE has additional cowling flaps, improved pilot armor, and a new radio mast - all the 105 were built at Farmingdale. The D-2-RA (200 built) was similar to the D-1-RE, as was the D-2-RE (445 built), which also featured minor upgrades to the fuel system. Some 100 D-3-RAs were then constructed, and these were similar to the D-2-RE. The D-5-RE (300 built) was based on the D-1-RE, but with modifications to the aircraft’s fuel and hydraulic systems. The D-4-RA (200 built) was similar to the D-5-RE. The D-6-RE (350 built) was effectively a D-1-RE with two-point shackles for a bomb or a drop tank under the fuselage. The D-10-RE (250 built) was also based on the D-1-RE, but with further improvements to the hydraulic system and the fitment of a General Electric C-23 turbosupercharger.