The only P-47 I worked on was belly landed in a swamp and the task was to remove the wings without damage to allow for transport so I was not aware that the maingear struts shrunk.
From experience on the F4U and Grumman S2 Tracker aircraft I would expect the P-47 to use the same concepts as they use.
On the Corsair there is a shrink cable from an anchor point forward of the pivot point that pulls the strut "up" during retraction but does not affect movement when the gear is down. The Corsair gear retracts rearwards.
On the Tracker the same effect is caused by a telescopic shrink strut mounted forward of the pivot point that causes the same effect. Again the Tracker gear retracts rearwards.
The photo at P-47D Thunderbolt – WalkAround shows a diagonal strut (arrowed) that could be a telescopic shrink strut given the angle it is at. Unfortunately the struts on this aircraft are flat so some detail is missing.
How hard would it be to have designed a double telescoping-strut so you could get a big landing gear and a big prop and retract it into a small space with reasonable reliability?
How hard would it be to have designed a double telescoping-strut so you could get a big landing gear and a big prop and retract it into a small space with reasonable reliability?
Compare the complexity, number of potential failure points, assembly weight, manufacturing costs, and maintenance man-hours of the Sea Fury gear with the P-47 gear. The P-47 gear wins on all counts.
The Sea Fury gear is a good example of the first law of British aircraft design. Why make it easy when with a bit of effort you can make it bloody near impossible.