The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was a World War II-era fighter aircraft produced by the American aerospace company Republic Aviation from 1941 through 1945. | War History Online

German Pilots Underestimated the P-47 Thunderbolt—Until It Filled the Sky with 1,600 Bullets a Minute In 1943, the Luftwaffe met a weapon it had never imagined—the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. Nicknamed the Jug, it was the heaviest single-engine fighter of the war, a seven-ton monster wrapped around a massive Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp engine and armed with eight .50-caliber machine guns. At first, pilots doubted it. Too big, too clumsy, too slow to match Germany’s nimble Bf 109s and Fw 19