A naval P-47?

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pampa14

Airman 1st Class
126
55
May 14, 2013
Looking for naval fighters on the web I found this article with pictures of Republic P-47 Thunderbolts embarked on aircraft carriers. There was a naval version of this plane? The report and photos, never seen by me before, can be viewed at the link below:


Aviação em Floripa: Um P-47 Naval?


Best Regards!
 
Note that in some of them the props are removed and the engines covered over. This would suggest, as fubar says, that they are being transported.

In teh last picture on that page half the carrier has P-47s and the other half P-38s without outer wing panels.
 
Some P-47s were fitted with catapult interfaces for flying off when transported to the War Zone. I've never read of studies of a Naval P-47. The P-39 without its nose wheel was prototyped for Carrier suitability.
 
No Naval version. No sea trials, No request from USN or USMC. F4U-1 was far superior to P-47D for carrier ops and had the same range at USN bomber altitudes.

All pics on carrier deck (including P-51) are transport. One exception - P-51D-5-NA was tested for Carrier duty so that is one exception.
 

Its hindsight, but the Navalized P-51 Sea Horse, operating from Escort Carriers within range to escort B-29s might have been less costly in lives than taking Iwo Jima.
 
pinehilljoe said:
Its hindsight, but the Navalized P-51 Sea Horse, operating from Escort Carriers within range to escort B-29s might have been less costly in lives than taking Iwo Jima.
Click to expand...

In this rather interesting scenario, would the VII FC been operating out of the carriers or would escort duties have fallen to USN personnel?
 
To my knowledge the only naval P-47's were those used by the Soviet Navy during WWII. The book "Red Stars" has a color profile of one of the type. Of course the Soviet navy had no aircraft carriers so the type was used for attacking shipping. The Soviet air force was unimpressed with the type so they were off loaded to the navy. IIRC we provided about 200 P-47's via Lend-Lease.
 
No, the P-47s seen on carrier decks were being transported to islands in the Pacific for combat use from land-based fields. They were both offloaded by crane and flown off in other cases. The same is true for P-39s and, I believe, P-40s. None of these aircraft had the range to be able to fly to forward bases.

In all my research I have never seen a single reference to the P-47 being considered for a carrier-suitable version.

AlanG
 
Pampa14 never replies to anything said about any of his posts.
Though he says he has never seen any of the pictures before, he posted some of them about a year ago, on this forum. P-40s and P-47s being flown off aircraft carriers for delivery to land bases.

This time it's just P-47s, some just being flown off for delivery to land bases, but most of the pictures are of P-47s that are in no fashion ready to be flown anywhere.
 
Almost any WW2 US fighter could fly off a carrier deck to a land airfield.
Though I personally love and have flown a several versions of F4U's, according to several WW2/Korean vets ive spoken to will tell you this : the aircraft that the F4U is being referred to as "superior in carrier flight ops" to exists only as a figment of imagination.
Come on. the ship has poor visibility on the GROUND and on final, let alone to shipboard it being superior to anything.
The brits had to show us how it was done on carrier decks with F4U's, and it STILL wasn't anyone's favorite in that role.
The P47 was a superb ground attack fighter too, with all the range required.
 
pinehilljoe said:
Its hindsight, but the Navalized P-51 Sea Horse, operating from Escort Carriers within range to escort B-29s might have been less costly in lives than taking Iwo Jima.
Click to expand...

Surely you jest?? A converted fragile landlubber machine on a baby flattop? Only a few NAVAL aircraft types could operate (relatively) safely from those postage stamps! (Mostly Avengers and Wildcats) You might have saved a few Marines, but you would have killed a lot of Seahorse pilots and flight deck troops, not to mention damaged B-29 crews ditching at sea. Plus, you would have left 3 Japanese fighter bases right on the B-29s flight path to their targets.
 

Be careful dissing on Pampa14. Everyone here seems to like his stuff. I'm probably taking a risk of banning for posting this.


Chris
 
I am fully aware of the great outcry at some of the other forums. I will also reserve my opinion about the quality of a good number of other WWII forums, too.

So he posts a link to a page he's created about WWII aircraft he's interested in - he doesn't claim the images as his own, he doesn't intentionally post misleading information - he obviously shares an appreciation for the very same aircraft that you do.

As it happens, if you look at any of his threads here, they have spawned countless discussions and in many cases, better information and data than a typical thread about similar aircraft.

And is this not what the forum is about?
 
I was just making a observation about Pampa14. To my knowledge he has never replied to a post on this forum, but that's his prerogative .

I've been a aviation fan for over 60 years. I was buying Air Progress and Royal Air Force Flying Review with my paper route earnings when I was 10 years old, I've seen a lot of aircraft pictures, and my memory is still pretty good. I'm not easily impressed by someone's else's view of what they judge to be a rare, never seen before picture.
 
And how about the visitors who see those collections and then read the comments in the related threads and learn details about those photos?

I think my point here is that yes, he rarely responds to his own threads, but a great many threads here were also done by one-post wonders and left to die on the vine - at least, in pampa's case, alot of discussion breaks out in his threads leading to a great deal of information.

You and I (and many others) have a good working knowledge of WWII aircraft and the details behind them, but how about the younger crowd that doesn't?
 
dogsbody said:
He never ever posts anything else but the link to his own blog. Never ever!


Chris
Click to expand...
So...that's a requirement of posting - a follow-on post with words for whatever reason?

I have posted links to news articles and didn't post again in that particular thread, should we have those removed to?

Many members have posted links to websites that contain collections of photos, myself included - should this practice be stopped?

How about the links to offsite pages that some members have in their sigs - perhaps we should ban those also.

The rules of the forum is no advertising - I don't see pampa selling anything. His posts go to photograph collections of aircraft. On many occasions, those start informative discussions amongst the membership (as I have pointed out before).

And with the exception of a couple people, this doesn't seem to be a problem, especially with the forum moderators and admins.
 
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