60 caliber machine guns.Īn XP-84 Thunderjet prototype, one of two built before work began on pre-production YF-84s (US Air Force) The new fighter was required to have a top speed of 600 mph and to be armed with either six. On September 11, 1944, the US Army Air Forces issued a requirement for a new day fighter powered by the General Electric/Allison J35 axial flow turbojet, a much slimmer engine that was more suited to being placed inside the fuselage of a slender jet. At first, Kartveli experimented with putting the engine into the fuselage of a P-47, but it proved too bulky, and the concept was abandoned. But Kartveli stayed on and became the company’s chief engineer and designed the P-47 Thunderbolt, arguably one of the best fighter-bombers of WWII.īefore the development of the Thunderjet, Republic first considered placing a jet engine in a P-47 Thunderbolt (Author unknown)īy 1944, Kartveli had begun initial design work on an aircraft that would be powered by the new centrifugal compressor turbojet which had been pioneered separately by Frank Whittle in England and Hans von Ohain in Germany. When Seversky was forced out as the head of the Seversky Aero Company in 1939, the company reorganized as Republic Aviation. True to his roots, he hired a number of designers from his home country, one of whom was Alexander Kartveli, a native of Tbilisi, Georgia. The history of Republic Aviation begins with Alexander de Serversky, a WWI veteran and émigré from Russia who started an airplane factory in the US that bore his name. US Air Force F-84E Thunderjets from the 474th Fighter-Bomber Wing over Korea in 1952 (US Air Force)įebru– The first flight of the Republic F-84 Thunderjet.
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