I'm a WW2 aviation buff and have posted some great pics of damaged P-47's that brought their pilots home.

http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aviation/tree-trimming-army-air-force-style-24161.html





www.nightchicken.com

Those guys had big brass ones.


-Mark.

Wow, I've never seen most of those pics.

Very cool, thanks for the link that got forwarded onto the wife and father-in-law

A lot of really cool pics.  It is amazing that  they were able to fly back.

I see you're also a member of ww2aircraft.  



The P-47 is my all-time favorite aircraft.  If I had been in WWII, that's what I would have wanted to fly.
Here's some more damaged jugs that came home, or in one case made it home undamaged except for hitting a truck on landing.  



351st FS, 353rd FG July '44 made it home.






Of course, one of the most famous P-47s damaged was Robert S. Johnson's P-47, HV-P.












This one made it home fine with no damage, until it ran into a radar truck.














 
 
 

This P-47 survived a bomb blast. On a bombing run the pilot dropped all his bombs but one. The bomb was stuck and would not fall away. Upon returning to the field, as soon as the plane touched down, the bomb fell away and detonated. This is what remains of the plane. The pilot survived flew again two days later. That is testament to the ruggedness and protection a P-47 supplied.

In Robert S Johnson's book; Thunderbolt!, he retells a pilot that overshot his landing and crashed into a brick and cement factory a short distance away.



Plane hit the building, wings and tail sheared off, came to a stop, and the pilot smashed open the canopy and walked away, without so much as a scratch...

Thanks for all the great additional pics.





www.nightchicken.com

Farmingdale's gone,and Evansville doesn't look too good,thanks to Whirlpool closing. Would be nice if there was a P-47 in front of Evansville.

Here is a picture of the last P-47N manufactured.  It's at Farmingdale.  Beautiful aircraft.






www.nightchicken.com

Thanks for posting the link!

While I'm all for giving kudos to our pilots in WW2, it seems to me that flying so low that encounters with trees are expected is kinda dumb.

They're lucky  that the "jug" was so hardy.

Ever tried strafing enemy targets in wooded areas?



 

During the Battle of the Bulge, P-47 pilots deliberately flew through the tops of the trees to reveal Germans below.

Sorry, but I'm still calling BS. Trees are generally triangular-shaped...using a plane as a sort of weed-wacker to nip off the top couple of feet "to reveal the troops below" is ridiculous.

Trees are of different heights, one cannot fly at "tree top level", buzzing off the top 4' of one tree, and expect *every* tree to be the same height....you might cut off 4' of one, overfly the next one entirely, and then encounter a tree that is 30' taller than the others. (If the forest is so thick one cannot see enemy troops within, that's a pretty damn dense forest.)

It would be very difficult to adjust altitude that quickly, when one is flying at 300+ mph. (I'm not a pilot, but I know how hard it is to swerve at 60+mph when avoiding freeway debris)

Chance encounters? Yeah, I can see that....I've heard of stories where the F-111 would fly so low that they came back with sagebrush in the wingtips....but deliberately defoliating a forest using a plane?



It's an entertaining war story.

You don't have to believe it.  It has been well chronicled though.  They aren't traveling at 300+mph either.  The P-47D had a sea level, balls to the wall top speed of about 330mph.

"You could see by the shattered trees and the torn branches where the P-47s had gone through. You'd have to see it to
believe it. Those crazy kids couldn't see what was hidden from above, so they went right into the forest to find out.
They cut a path right through the top of the woods."

(The Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Story, 1950)

Here's a MSPaint illustrating:



Only the very tops of trees could be trimmed via P47....this would leave the majority of the branches still obscuring troop movement(s).

Weedwacker via P47 is not an effective way to expose troops, because of the limited zone of trimmage, the *very* high risk of colliding with a thicker part of the tree trunk and/or branches, the relatively slow speed of the aircraft which would enable effective ground fire, and the fact that an aircraft would neither be able to see, nor shoot at, any troops thus exposed.

By the time the aircraft circled (or his wingman got into position––I hope to hell he didn't shoot with his Lead directly over the target) the troops would have dispersed.

So, what are we to make of this "well documented" story?

My theory is that it was an uncommon occurance (flying low, into the trees––probably by accident or "target fixation")....this was done by all aircraft types, but only the P47 survived with any numbers. The other aircraft types (P51 and P38, for example) were simply destroyed when the tree encounter happened.

So a few P47's survived....after a few months, or however long it took to have several survive and return, the pilots and/or crew chiefs (likely after a few rounds of rum) concocted a story about deliberately flying through trees to expose the enemy.

This may have even gotten some medals awarded....but I'm still calling BS. (The words in red in the quote probably describes bomb damage, not aircraft-caused; why is it written thus? I wonder....maybe a propaganda piece about how great American planes and pilots were?)

I wonder if there's any A-10 pilots reading this....the A-10 is probably better designed at handling trees....is this "P47 -v- tree top" story legit plausible, a la  Mythbusters?

Remember, I'm not talking about incidental contact with trees....I'm talking about deliberately, as a matter of established tactics (formal or informal) flying into the trees, with the expressed purpose of de-limbing the tops to expose troops below.

I think this is one of those things where there are so many variables that no one would know unless they were there.

Battle of the Bulge = winter, which would mean that many types of trees would have no foliage?

The P-47 is a tough little aircraft.

They are all pines in the area that are raised in perfect rows so would be the same hight and could possibly work. many of the trees that were there in 1944 are still there(I think). I visited last in 2003 and they had just removed a large tract of trees and plowed the earth. There are still a lot of fox holes and such in the area, or should be if they have not cut the trees down.

The P47 is my favorite fighter of WW2.

Saw an episode of Dogfights that had a Jug pilot bugging out and RTB, but a 109 pilot had other ideas.   He lined up on the jug and opened up on it, scoring many hits... but the jug kept flying.   The 190 driver pulled up next to the jug to survey it, then fell behind to shoot it up again... and the jug kept on flying.   He again pulled up next to the jug and shook his fist at the American pilot... then flew away - he had run out of ammunition!



IIRC, the American pilot made it back to base... and counted the holes in his aircraft... but stopped counting after 300.  There were just too many holes!  

Saw film of a P-47 doing a strafing run were he was so low that you could see his shell casings hitting the ground
about ten feet behind him.
The cases were landing in his friggin SHADOW.
Looked like his prop was only about 4 feet from the ground.