They were freaking tough. .

Anyone know how it got it's nickname??

If you were to stand it up on its nose it looked like a milk jug.

Hmmmm,... guess I could see that. The Military History Now website offers this explanation:

"...it was the less glamorous Republic P-47 Thunderbolt that was the real workhorse of the Allied victory. Nicknamed the "Jug" (short for "Juggernaut") by adoring pilots, the P-47 was a heavyweight warbird and one that packed a devastating punch. More than 15,600 Thunderbolts were manufactured between 1941 and 1945 and they served in every theatre of the war performing a variety of missions from bomber escort to close air support."

Ironically, Mayer was shot down & killed by a P47 a year later.

A nice deflection shot would have ended it.

I've read British pilots joked that Thunderbolt pilots dodged German bullets by climbing down and running around in the fuselage during dogfights.

After WWII the Air Corps/USAF, in its infinite wisdom, gave or sold dirt cheap P-47s to lots of countries all over the world and then gave the newer models that were left to the Guard and Reserve. They kept a bunch of the "sexier" P-51s in active AF squadrons.

So then Korea comes around and we need a good fighter bomber. Not enough jets to go around, especially in the beginning, so a bunch of now F-51s are sent to Korea as a stop gap until more jets (F-80s and early model F-84s) become available.

So now the liquid cooled engine F-51s are flying low level bombing and strafing missions over N Korea and getting shot down on a regular basis. The radial engined F-47 would have been MUCH more effective because they carried more bombs AND they could take ground fire and survive at a much higher level than the F-51s.

In hindsight, the AF would have been much better served if they had kept enough F-47s in active service after the war to handle the ground attack mission. /rant over

quote:

---

Anyone know how it got it's nickname??

---

The Thunderbolt got the nicknamed "The Jug" because the fuselage shape resembled the design of an everyday milk bottle (or "jug") of the era turned on it side. The claim that it was for short for "Juggernaut" appears to be something recent, as I've never seen (or heard) that explanation given anywhere else before.

Like an F-16 and A-10 hybrid. A grunt's best friend.

Norman, my "favorite" post WWII story is that there were tons of P-38s in South Korea at the end of WWII. Our government was worried that the South Koreans would start a war with the north, so they used bulldozers to "break the backs" of the -38s and make them unflyable and unrepairable.

My grandfather flew the F84H in Korea. His experiences there opened up a lot of doors throughout his career along with flying in Vietnam.

He has since passed but when he talked of Korea he always mentioned the unforgiving cold. He was from Boston and thought he knew what cold was, he says Korea introduced him to a level of cold he hoped he would never see again.