Dakota Territory Air Museum’s P-47 Update – January, 2021

Here the oxygen bottle sits in the custom field modified bracket. (image via AirCorps Aviation)
United Fuel Cells


Warbird Digest has just received the January, 2021 report from Chuck Cravens concerning the restoration of the Dakota Territory Air Museum’s P-47D Thunderbolt 42-27609 at AirCorps Aviation in Bemidji, Minnesota. We thought our readers would be very interested to see how the project has progressed since our last article on this important project. So without further ado, here it goes!


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This view is through the engine mount and shows the firewall with relay boxes, oil tank, and other accessories in place. (image via AirCorps Aviation)

Update

This month work on the secondary cowl and turbosupercharger connections began. The modified oxygen bottle brackets were installed. Progress on the wings and cockpit systems continued. This restoration has been a long process, but every little step brings us closer to the test flight of the only Republic-built Razorback under restoration.

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Preheater and secondary cowl skins show in this image. (image via AirCorps Aviation)

Secondary Cowl

The secondary cowl covers the accessory section forward of the firewall. Several secondary cowl skin panels were fitted this month.

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The black cylindrical part is the dynamotor, and the rectangular silver object with the red label is the modulator for the transmitter. (image via AirCorps Aviation)

Both are part of a system that increases voltage to power radio systems; vacuum tubes in 40’s-era electronics require higher voltages than their modern, solid-state counterparts.

Cockpit Systems

The restoration team has made many of the initial connections to electrical terminals on various switch boxes and control boxes. This month Aaron started putting the connected wires into bundled, wiring harnesses.

Wings

The wings gained some skin panels, extrusions around the gear openings, and inspection panels this month.

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The underside of a P-47 wing has many inspection panels. (image via AirCorps Aviation)

Several of these panels already have their covers installed – like the ones on the yellow zinc chromated reinforcing plate on the image above. The line of rectangular openings in the skin angling across the upper right of the photo are for inspection access covers for the flaps and ailerons.

Oxygen Bottles

42-27609 has a non standard location for the oxygen bottles, necessitated by the field installation of the Christmas tree fuel tank.

Turbosupercharger

The Complex Turbosupercharger System

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Supercharger Diagram from T.O. EX 00000 manual. (image via AirCorps Aviation)

The P-47 had the ability to perform well at high altitudes, whether as an escort fighter or in air to air combat, but it could also operate at low altitudes in a fighter bomber role with great success. This operational flexibility is attributable to the Thunderbolt’s Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp, twin-row, 18-cylinder radial engine coupled with its complicated turbosupercharger system. The turbosupercharger system made the P-47 Thunderbolt a complex fighter for the time period, perhaps the most complex single-engine fighter in the American arsenal.

P 47 Turbosupercharger Field Service Manual General Electric GEJ 1630 Aug 1945 2
This diagram gives an idea of how the heat from the turbosupercharger was dissipated. Diagram from T.O. EX 00000 manual (Page G26). (image via AirCorps Aviation)

It may be helpful to think of an aircraft turbosupercharger (#17 in diagram) as a big air pump. It takes in cool intake air (light blue in the diagram), and pressurizes it. That air, now hot from the heat of pressurization (dark blue in the diagram) is pumped through an intercooler (#11) to bring the temperature down, because cooler air is denser. Passing through the intercooler, the hot air is cooled and continues on to the carburetor. When it arrives, it is mixed with fuel, and the mechanical supercharger pushes it into the cylinders of the R-2800 via the intake manifold and intake valves.

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This diagram gives an idea of how the heat from the turbosupercharger was dissipated. Diagram from T.O. EX 00000 manual (Page G26). (image via AirCorps Aviation)

The ideal air/fuel mixture for a normally aspirated gasoline internal combustion engine is around 14.7 parts air to 1 part fuel by mass. When an engine is supercharged, it can produce maximum power at a somewhat richer ratio of roughly 12.5-13 to 1. It is critical to always have sufficient air coming into the engine to maintain the correct ratio. As an airplane climbs, the air becomes thinner, and as a result, weighs less per unit of volume. The fuel volume also expands somewhat, albeit to a far lesser degree. Therefore, at higher altitudes a larger volume of air must be pushed through the engine in order to maintain the proper fuel/air ratio. This increased air volume requirement explains the need for either a turbocharger, or the second stage of a two-stage supercharger, at altitudes above 15,000 feet or so.

What Drives the Two Superchargers?

To operate, superchargers require power from the engine in some fashion; most being directly spun via a mechanical connection to the engine. The  P-47’s R-2800 has a single-stage, single-speed, centrifugal type supercharger connected to the back of the engine, but it also has a turbosupercharger. While a mechanical driven supercharger needs to use some of the power produced by the engine, the extra power it allows more than makes up for the energy drain from its operation. An exhaust-driven turbosupercharger system also drains some engine power due to the resultant back pressure, but again, the gains far outweigh losses incurred in driving the turbo.

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The General Electric C-23 turbosupercharger diagram from the Turbosupercharger Field Service Manual (General Electric), GEJ-1630, Aug-1945, manual from AviationShoppe.com collection

The turbosupercharger is spun by exhaust gasses (red in the diagram) ducted to a “bucket wheel” in the lower half of the C-23 General Electric turbosupercharger. In turn, that bucket wheel turns the impeller. The impeller takes in cool air in the center and, by centrifugal force, spins it outwards, pressurizing and pushing it out to the intercooler through ducting.

The Design Elements That Make a P-47 Look Like a Milk Jug

At some point in its history, the P-47 gained the nickname “Jug”. The origins of this sobriquet are frequently disputed/otherwise explained, but one of the more popular origin stories involves the name coming from the resemblance between the Thunderbolt’s deep-bellied fuselage and the shape of an American, forties-era milk jug.

milk jug
A forties-era milk jug. (image via AirCorps Aviation)

The P-47’s milk bottle shape was largely dictated by the turbosupercharger system in the type’s fuselage. The oval cross-section fuselage looks bulky because the belly curves from the engine back to the turbosupercharger, but this design was necessary to allow room for the large R-2800 and the ductwork, intercooler, and turbocharger hardware enclosed within the fuselage.

Republic Aviation Mary Ruth Fietz 1944 June Matthews 0006
The oval shaped cowl and curved belly are clear in this image. The air intake is the area at the bottom of the cowl. Republic Aviation, Evansville factory courtesy of the Harold Morgan collection

Even the engine cowl opening’s unique, ovoid shape relates directly to the turbocharger, as the main air duct intake opening is located in the lower cowl; the cowl had to be designed around it. That’s why the P-47 cowl isn’t circular like those for many other R-2800 powered aircraft.

Republic Aviation pre oil service to soon to be completed Thunderbolt
With the cowl off, the three intake ducts are visible. The primary duct (center opening) is somewhat trapezoidal in shape. The smaller circular openings take in air for the left and right oil temperature regulators (oil coolers). Republic Aviation, Evansville factory, courtesy of the Harold Morgan collection


And that’s all for this month. We wish to thank AirCorps Aviation, Chuck Cravens for making this report possible! We look forwards to bringing more restoration reports on progress with this rare machine in the coming months. Be safe, and be well

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Richard Mallory Allnutt's aviation passion ignited at the 1974 Farnborough Airshow. Raised in 1970s Britain, he was immersed in WWII aviation lore. Moving to Washington DC, he frequented the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum, meeting aviation legends.

After grad school, Richard worked for Lockheed-Martin but stayed devoted to aviation, volunteering at museums and honing his photography skills. In 2013, he became the founding editor of Warbirds News, now Vintage Aviation News. With around 800 articles written, he focuses on supporting grassroots aviation groups.

Richard values the connections made in the aviation community and is proud to help grow Vintage Aviation News.

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About Richard Mallory Allnutt (Chief Editor) 1060 Articles
Richard Mallory Allnutt's aviation passion ignited at the 1974 Farnborough Airshow. Raised in 1970s Britain, he was immersed in WWII aviation lore. Moving to Washington DC, he frequented the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum, meeting aviation legends. After grad school, Richard worked for Lockheed-Martin but stayed devoted to aviation, volunteering at museums and honing his photography skills. In 2013, he became the founding editor of Warbirds News, now Vintage Aviation News. With around 800 articles written, he focuses on supporting grassroots aviation groups. Richard values the connections made in the aviation community and is proud to help grow Vintage Aviation News.

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