Soaring to Glory by Philip Handleman & Lt. Col. Harry T. Stewart Jr

Author:Philip Handleman & Lt. Col. Harry T. Stewart, Jr.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regnery History

They were flying late-model World War II holdovers, Republic P-47N fighters. The “N” model was the final production variant of the famed Thunderbolt, which in the earlier “D” configuration had distinguished itself in the war’s European theater as both an effective dogfighter and a tough ground-attack platform. The aircraft had an unusual genesis. Its seedling was the brainchild of Alexander de Seversky, a Russian engineer and naval fighter-bomber pilot in World War I who lost a leg on his first combat mission but reentered the fray with an artificial limb, ending his service as a thirteen-victory ace.

Tsar Nicholas II personally awarded de Seversky Russia’s highest military decoration. In 1917, when the Bolshevik Revolution toppled the Romanovs, the heroic pilot fled his homeland. He immigrated to the United States, where his remarkable flying record and his charisma, charm, inventive genius, and entrepreneurialism combined to open up new opportunities.

In his adopted country, de Seversky’s aeronautical innovations included an inflight refueling system and a complex mechanical bombsight to improve bombing accuracy. He became a much sought-after dinner party guest on the New York social circuit, where he mingled with prominent figures. His new circle of friends included Brigadier General William Mitchell, the doyen of American air power.

In the mid-1930s the enterprising émigré’s conceptualization of a modern fighter ripened into the P-35, a proposed replacement for the Air Corps’ antiquated P-26 Peashooter. De Seversky’s low-wing monoplane featured a big-barreled profile with enclosed cockpit and retractable landing gear. In one of its iterations, the fighter gained a measure of fame as Jacqueline Cochran’s winning mount in the 1938 cross-country Bendix Trophy Race. But government-mandated refinements and production delays hobbled the promising fighter program, which caused Seversky Aircraft Company to incur heavy losses and sink perilously into debt.

By the end of the 1930s, disgruntled investors ousted the founder from his Farmingdale, New York, start-up, which was soon renamed Republic Aviation Corporation. Disappointed but no less ambitious, de Seversky channeled his expertise into a new life as an outspoken advocate for air power in the mold of his friend General Mitchell. De Seversky authored the prophetic Victory Through Air Power, published in 1942, and was featured in a wartime Walt Disney film advancing his theory of aerial bombardment.

Alexander Kartveli, a fellow Russian émigré who had served as de Seversky’s vice president of engineering, stayed with the reorganized firm, applying his considerable talents to improve the P-35’s basic form. Under his guidance the fighter evolved further into the P-43 Lancer, which proved to be only a transitional design. Additional enhancements were part of the ongoing improvement effort, which resulted in the illustrious P-47 Thunderbolt.

Harry, who had cut his teeth on the P-47D/G during pre-deployment fighter lead-in training at Walterboro in the fall of 1944, considered the “N” model to be the best fighter he had ever flown—even surpassing the highly regarded P-51 Mustang. Although the P-47N did not match the Mustang’s roll-rate, it had greater endurance because it had been designed for ultra-long-range bomber escort missions over Pacific waters.

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