Engine Start-Up of a rare Republic P-47D Thunderbolt - NX7159Z 

James, what did your grand father think of this aircraft. Fond memories ? Did he fly other types for a comparison?

James Burgoyne, depending on where your Great Grandfather served, he may have provided fighter cover for my father's bomb group. In any case, I send him a great Thank you from all the bomber crews, and for his service in defense of freedom.

Randy McGaugh I respect you, my grandfather was a medic in the Vietnam war. he had a stroke recently, and luckily he survived. Still going strong to this day!

+GoldHogger , Good to hear. Pass along my respect and thanks. No one was as important as "Doc" once the heat was on.

Randy McGaugh Agreed

That would be a very interesting conversation.

Do you know if she worked in Evansville IN?

@@acme_tnt8741 I sure don't.

Talk to her?! Hell, I would've tried to marry her. Any woman that builds aircraft like the P-47 is my kind of woman. Priorities...........who needs 'em?

Me too ❤

That was true of many fighters, including the P-51.

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Was he RAF? I know the RAF flew them in the CBI Theater.

@@richardlahan7068 Yes, I knew him as an instructor when I was a teenage air cadet, and as an air cadet officer he always wore his wings and medals.

+hallis1 There is something about the sound of the Dailler-Benz of the FW 190 that equals and to some sounds better than the RR.

+None Given Wow did I really spell Daimler like that. I must be hearing things.

The only Daimler-Benz engines in Fw 190s were in a couple of prototype 190Cs that never went into production. The short nose 190s had BMW radials and all production long nose type 190s had Junkers Jumo V-12s. The Daimler-Benz V-12 was used in the Bf/Me109 of course, and it does sound great.

A couple of years ago I was working in the front yard. There are several airfields around, general aviation, small military and full blown international hubs and a joint base, so we get a wide variety of sounds in the sky. So I'm minding my business and all of a sudden there's a sound like a mountain lion and a bear pretty close by. I look down the street and a half second later a beautiful P-47 appears a thousand feet over the neighbor's roof, magnificent.

The idle has a nice lope to it.

Its a shame this video didn't show the Jug in the air accompanied by a A-10 Warthog

@ben pointer Totally different roles, the P-47 is a high altitude fighter while the A-10 is a tree top level close air support attack aircraft. Dont understand why people keep comparing them. Both designed for totally different roles.

@ben pointer P-47 was not designed to bust armor.

@@laurencethornblade8357 The P-47 was a multirole aircraft, and was often used in a close air support role, especially once the P-51 Mustang arrived and took over bomber escort duty. The P-47 would have to use bombs to destroy tanks, since the guns couldn’t penetrate their armor, but anything else; troops, trucks, and trains, for example; would fall to the eight .50s. There are even stories of P-47 pilots attacking Tiger tanks with their guns, the most vulnerable part of the Tiger being the trailer they were towing carrying extra fuel. Once out of fuel, the Tiger was useless and easily destroyed by Allied tanks or artillery.

@@singleproppilot There weren’t a lot of Tiger tanks in Western Europe.

Wow, great history!

Quem foi seu avô?

awesome, how do you say '"your grandfather is a badass in Portuguese.?." Just so there are no misunderstandings, calling a guy a badass is the greatest compliment one man can give another.

+Hawkin's Dog finest radial piston engine ever built imnsho......merlin is my favorite inline.... sorry Allison....

Hawkin's Dog The V12s just don't have a good sound at idle/low speed, but once at power, they produce their own terrific sound. Hard to beat an 18 cyl. radial at idle, or at power...

You should hear them in person, if you haven't! They rumble and roar, like a proper war engine should!

Mmmmmm Roger that.

@upel2817 I have. Those big radials actually make the ground shake and you feel it in your chest. Would LOVE to have heard an entire squadron warming up & taxiing or better yet F6F's, Corsairs & Skyraiders on a carrier flight deck.

Wow, engine mechanic on Biak island during WW2 must have been an adventure. Please consider subscribing to my channel, Thanks! ➤bit.ly/3azRH8e

NEIN NEIN NEIN NEIN!!! NEINEINEIN!!!!! FEGELEIN!!!!!

shizer

More like the 8th airforce; they also flew escort missions like the P51 mustangs but also did so many other things all over europe.

18 cylinders of pure USA muscle, Nothing was better at high Altitude..

Out of curiosity, I always thought and was told that radial engines were much better high up because of power and efficency. Completely false or dependent on plane?

The Jug. Often overlooked bye the P51 shadowing it. But it was an awesome killing machine and deserves to be parked right next to the P51. The Germans feared it much

Or and A-10!

Sadly many of them did!!!

Yes, these young pilots had over 2000 hp. at their disposal. Ten years later young guys cruising thought they were something with 200 hp.

MEE TOO!!! You gotta love the WW II gun camera footage , especially when they were strafing targets of opportunity on the way home from a bomber escort mission... 8- .50 cals has a way of destroying stuff pretty easily!!!

Yes

@@PJS50 The F4U Corsair only had six .50 cals, so the P-47 was a step up in that department.

They are very ugly in a beautiful kind of way. Or very beautiful in an ugly kind of way. Either way you cannot ignore them.

@ben pointer Well, the Zero weighed roughly 5,000 lbs and the P-47 was 10,000 lbs, so it comes down to tactics. The P-47 could cruise at very high altitude, spot a zero flying at lower altitude and descend on it with all those guns blazing at close to 500 mph. Not much a Zero could do about that.

John Wayne you forgot the F6F Hellcat. It had the same motor. How to win a war by P&W.

+Captain Whisky I did, I got surround sound, walked out side you could hear it 50ft away easy, that's with windows and doors closed to

Yup, it is a BEAST!

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The really amazing thing is Johnson had already been ambushed by a 190 and was tore up from 20mm hits scored on it by the 190, he then spiraled down 5,000 or more feet on fire and couldn't bail out because his canopy jammed about 6 inches open, luckily the fire went out and he recovered from the spin, he was limping home by himself when old Egon Mayer happened upon him, as far as the number of bullet holes in his plane goes he said he stopped counting when he got to 200 and hadn't moved!

And it should be noted that good old Egon was later hammered out of the sky and killed by Thunderbolts, THE BIG NASTY!!!

Actually the most decorated ace of the war was Erich Hartmann, and the Title "flying tank" belongs to the IL2

@@sovietred7371 Nobody said anything about "most decorated", look into the top 10 aces of any fighter of the war, you'll see that the top 10 from any other fighter has dead aces before the end of the war, and the IL2 wasn't a fighter, the Thunderbolt could do either role as well as anything else.

I believe Major Johnson's story is on a episode of Dog Fights.

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Yea, some of the airworthy ones have working turbos and some don't. It really doesn't matter since around 10,000 ft or so and below the turbo wasn't even used, the wastegate dumps were opened diverting the exhaust out of them and keeping it from going back to the turbo, below around 10,000 ft the single stage supercharger built into the backside of the engine provided plenty of air for it's engine. The only times they'd use the turbo down low was with the ADI engaged or the engine would overboost and grenade. About 25 years ago I was talking to a B17 pilot at an airshow and he told me the turbos weren't hooked up in it, he said "There's no oxygen system in it anyways, if we went above 10,000 ft we'd just wind up killing half the passengers in it anyways, this aircraft will never see 10,000 ft again in it's life."

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They were only there until they got to the Dutch border.

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One thing I always wanted to know: how do you restore these planes? Many replacement parts can no longer be found (or can they, in most cases?). In case parts are needed that may not be found, are they manufactured based on the original technical requirements existing in the official P-47 mechanics manuals?

Oh Christ, not that ‘one stray bullet in the radiator and it’s all over’ trope again…🙄

@@thethirdman225 Nah it's more the shape of the engine, radials are literally the same shape as a shield.

@@petertimowreef9085 It was you who mentioned the cooling system.

@@thethirdman225 Yea you're right, I guess I should've said inline engined fighter.

Yes , it's not difficult to understand why this was the preferred engine to take to sea. My dad was a fitter, served in the Pacific with the US task force, in FAA 1834 sq Corsairs on HMS Victorious. He said the plane easily the best the navy ever operated. Cheers from UK. Ps if you have interest, google USS Robin.

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I do favour the P-47 over the P-51

Oh yes

Interesting!

But no! That can’t be! Don’t you know the P-47 can’t be shot down because it’s so ‘rugged’ and masculine?

I hope so too

No they don’t. That’s an internet thing.

The P-47 is a BEAST

I agree, she is a beauty!

IT DID! read one crashed on take off at Republic in Farmingdale early on in the development phase of the program. It KNOCKED DOWN a brick building and was totaled. Pilot walked away unharmed. It might not have been the war winner P 51 as it lacked the range of a Mustang, but I know what I'd want to fly in a knife fight with a Luftwaffe ace. I think this beast can out roll a FW 190 above 20000 feet because of it's huge wings and the paddle blade propeller versions could out climb it too...

***** I'm 68...It's your job now...My grandsons got the message already...

I met a man who flew one from the field just south of Columbus ,he told me he PURPOSELY got off course to do a flyover for his family and buddies in Chillicothe ,he did upside down over Paint Street , liked to have seen that

It was nicknamed "The Jug."

David Johnson Well, sir, if I may, please, write down what they told you, record it whenever you can. Write their stories down so you it is passed down to other generations even more.

isn't it sad in a way to see them gone I talked to one who thought NOBODY was interested in what he did ''over there''

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She is a BEAST!

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So it’s about sexual identity for you, is it?😂

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I helped to excavate one of these aircraft from a field at the back of my friend’s house some forty years ago. His father was the farm manager. They had been ploughing up pieces of metal for some years and I remember cylinder head valves on the windowsill in his farmhouse. A local group came in with a JCB to dig it up. The aircraft had impacted vertically at very high speed. The guns were separated from the wing structures and found in the ground in the staggered formation as originally mounted. I don’t remember them finding remains of the wings but there were many cartridges. The guns were the first large artifacts. Much deeper were remains of the fuselage, a lot of oil and a heavy odour of fuel. The remains were squashed flat like aluminium foil. I remember the turbocharger was found reasonably intact, I can recall it lying on the barn floor where the artifacts were laid out. They excavated a long way down under where the fuselage and cockpit remains were found, to the extreme reach of the JCB having dozed a lower step, but they never found the engine, it had carried on down way too deep. The pilot perished in the accident. I remember harness being found but no bodily remains of the serviceman. At the time (the excavation was 1979-1980 ish) the reason given for the accident by the authorities was loss of consciousness at altitude due to fumes or anoxia. The crash site was about half a mile from Great Bardfield in Essex. Local US airfields were Andrewsfield and Wethersfield a couple of miles away. They said that the remains of the pilot were recovered during the war. I’m surprised by that given the appalling damage I saw. The pilot is likely to be buried at Madingley military cemetery in Cambridge where the university gave countryside for the US Airforce fallen. With superb research facilities available now perhaps someone can find more details of the crash and the lost pilot.

@@johnedwards1685 Nice story...

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The term ‘Razorback’ refers specifically to the early P-47 because of the sharp crest on the dorsal spine behind the cockpit. There were no razorback P-51s, Spitfires, Bf-109s, etc.. That is an internet thing.

...and what a BEAST!

+Treetop64 That is from the pilot adjusting the mixture.

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Yes I agree

Wow, I would be smiling too flying in a Thunderbolt.

One of the reasons for fewer maintenance personnel on modern jet aircraft. The JT8 engine would easily go over 10k hours with basic maintenance.

You and me both!

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