Republic P-47 Thunderbolt — Handmade Metal Model Airplane

The Jug — the biggest, heaviest single-engine fighter of the war, and the hardest to kill.

Handcrafted on an iron frame, hand-painted with decal insignia, metal propeller and rolling landing wheels, with the P-47's barrel fuselage and enormous four-blade propeller.

Details

• 100% iron frame
• Metal propeller
• Landing wheels that roll
• Hand-painted with decal insignia
• Canopy, wing and tail detail
• Ready to display

The aircraft

The P-47 weighed nearly eight tons loaded — more than twice a Spitfire — because it was built around a turbocharged radial engine and the ducting that fed it, all of which had to fit inside the fuselage. It carried eight .50 calibre guns and could dive faster than anything else in the sky.

It made its name in ground attack. Flying low over occupied France, where the flak was heaviest, Thunderbolts came back with cylinders shot away and whole sections of wing missing. The air-cooled radial had no coolant system to puncture, which is why it survived hits that would have killed a Mustang.