Republic P-47D Thunderbolt - Erickson Aircraft Collection - Madras, OR
N 44° 40.209 W 121° 08.964
10T E 646690 N 4947975
This WWII vintage aircraft is housed at the Erickson Aircraft Collection located at the Madras Airport.
Waymark Code: WMPC85
Location: Oregon, United States
Date Posted: 08/07/2015
Views: 1
The
Erickson Aircraft Collection relocated approximately 20 aircraft to the Madras Airport in 2014. This collection of mostly WWII vintage planes were previously housed in a military hanger at the Tillamook Air Museum (NW coastal town in Oregon).
The following verbiage is taken from the Erickson Aircraft Collection website to describe its history:
P-47D Thunderbolt
NARRATIVE
Republic Aviation’s P-47 Thunderbolt was the biggest and heaviest armed single engine American fighter of World War II. Its sturdy construction and eight 50-caliber machine guns made it equally adaptive as a ground support aircraft or as a bomber escort fighter. P-47s often demonstrated their ruggedness and dependability by returning home with combat damage that would doom any other production fighter. The early P-47 couldn’t match the overall performance of the German fighters it faced in combat, but it could, because of its massive weight, out dive any airplane in the sky. Republic enhanced its performance by improving the turbo supercharger effectiveness in the “D” model and replacing the razor back canopy configuration with the bubble type variant that gave the pilot 360 degree visibility. A total of 15,683 Thunderbolts were built,at an average cost of $96,000, more than any other single engine fighter of the war, the “D” model being most plentiful. The P-47 saw action in every theater proving itself to be a devastating low-level ground attack aircraft and versatile enough to be an effective high altitude escort fighter as well. With its bulky shape, the Jug was a monster of a machine, yet it was fast and maneuverable.
Neither the website nor the interpretive display mention how the museum acquired this aircraft.
This plane has an inventory page at Warbirdregistry.org here
Each aircraft contains its own interpretive display and I've included a picture of it which contains additional info on this aircraft.
This collection is definitely worth the visit for any aircraft enthusiast.