" No one would call this slipping the surly bonds," says Glenn, in a reference to the lofty words of the poem " High Flight." Thunderbolt pilot Tom Glenn says, " The horses were not our enemy, but our assignment was to prevent those columns from harming our troops." The gruesome sight sometimes made pilots physically ill-not what they expected when they signed up for pilot training starry-eyed about the beauty of flight. Left out of the citation is the fact that Thunderbolts frequently strafed horse-drawn supply columns, leaving behind tangled, bloody carcasses. In spite of intermittent rain and the hazard of landing at night on a slick tar paper runway." Before the enemy could reorganize and extract the remnants of his column, a further 187 vehicles, including 25 ammunition carriers, were attacked and destroyed. The citation continues: " The group returned to home base, and after being refueled and rearmed in a minimum length of time, returned to the scene of the action. More than 300 enemy military vehicles were destroyed in this attack alone." The road was blocked for 15 miles with personnel casualties, wrecked and burning military transport.
Attacking this enemy concentration, at minimum altitude, in spite of accurate ground fire, pass after pass until their bombs, rockets, and ammunition were expended. "Thirty-six P-47's of the 406 th Fighter Group took off on Septemat 15:05 hours and raced south of the Loire River to find the road from Chateauroux to Issoudon clogged with military transport, horse drawn vehicles, horse drawn artillery, armored vehicles and personnel.
Consider, for example, the citation awarded to pilots of the 406th Fighter Group, for destroying a column of German vehicles attempting to escape advancing Allied forces near Chateauroux, France: Today, war often appears clean and efficient when viewed on television screens.īut P-47 pilots know that combat can be dirty, gritty, and ugly. " Air-to-ground action wasn't glamorous, and it attracted very little attention." " People don't know we were there," said retired Col. Thunderbolt veterans who fought on the European continent in the final year of World War II feel that their contribution has been forgotten. The P-47 Thunderbolt evoked fierce loyalty from pilots who flew it, but today one group of P-47 veterans is bitter. P-47 Thunderbolts on the Continent of Europe, 1944-45 Since we cannot replace our fighters we darn well better disperse, camouflage (in the air and on the ground) and harden them so they don't get caught on the ground in the face of an enemy "Bodenplatte" type attack.Īnd of course, we need a P-47/IL-2/ Stuka equivalent for MAS ASAP. If we were making fighters in the thousands, go ahead and gloat, you earned it. We ain't living in WW2 anymore so the authors are in the wrong for ending the story at that point to go along with the current fascist America worship bandwagon to make the readers feel good because we DON'T make fighters by the thousands each month, we're lucky to get a few DOZEN in a year's time. This is also connected to the shiny-bare-metal- we-don't-need-camouflage crap also seen at the end of WW2. The funny ending of the story below is tainted with the disgusting smug American triumphalism that since we were so rich and mobilized we could just throw away P-47s and replace them. The French COIN success in Algeria, 1954-1962
Not commonly known but the F-47 Thunderbolt had a last hurrah with the French fighting in Algeria in the 1950s. P-47 Thunderbolt: American Stuka by Design "The way to build aircraft or anything else worthwhile is to think out quietly every detail, analyze every situation that may possibly occur, and, when you have it all worked out in practical sequence in your mind, raise heaven and earth and never stop until you have produced the thing you have started to make." Clean Sheet Designs: Swarms of Lightweight Scout/Attack Aircraft
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