Republic P-47 minutia and questions…

[Capt. Vick]

As some of you may know I’m very slowly working my way through a 1/72 scale “kit-bash” of the Republic XP-47H “Hemi-bolt” and while gathering material on this beast I came upon something unusual on one of the pictures included in the response back from the USAF Museum. (I just can’t bring myself to call it the National Museum of the United States Air Force – too wordy!) The photo shows a front port quarter view of the second test aircraft (s/n 42-2329 with the serial/radio call number 223298 clearly painted on the bottom of the leading edge of the port wing, towards the wing root, just in front of the landing gear bay. (See attached photo, and also notice that it appears that the shell discharge openings on the bottom of the wing were left open even though the guns were never going to be installed as this was strictly a test airframe. Curious huh? You would think that they would sheet metal them over to eliminate as much drag as possible and squeeze as much speed out of her as they could.)

Having never seen this before I began to wonder how prevalent it was and what might be the reason. The answer to the first appears to be that it was not that prevalent at all. In fact I have been able to find only one other T-Bolt similarly marked. It’s an XP-47N, serial/radio call number 227387, with modified P-38 ferry tanks of 330-gal on each wing and it appears on page 19 of Bill Norton’s (great) book, “U.S. Experimental & Prototype Aircraft Projects – Fighters 1939-1945”. (This photo was also credited to the USAF Museum) Incidentally this aircraft seems to have gone through quite a few modification itself, starting “life” as a “bubble-top” P-47D, converted at some point to a YP-47M, until finally ending up as the XP-47N. What do both of these airframes have in common? Both were manufactured at the Evansville Indiana plant and both were “experimentals”. Could this be a local practice done only at the Evansville plant to aid “lazy” test pilots find their charges without running around the back? Does any one know or have an educated guess? Also was this on both wings? (Both photos show the same side, argh!)

I humbly submit it to the ww2aircraft.net brain trust, discuss please.

Jim