Army & Navy: More Thunderbolts

The fighter plane-of-the-year is headed for quantity production. Republic Aviation Corp.’s sleek brute of the substratosphere, the P-47 Thunderbolt (TIME, Jan. 12), has released its design to other manufacturers. That much, and no more. Army censorship allowed Republic to announce last week in its annual statement to stockholders.

To airmen who have flown the Thunderbolt, a slick-handling job for all its weight (around 13,500-lb., about the same as an old Ford trimotor transport), this was news, good & hot. At Republic’s Long Island plant, P-47 was already in production. But if the heavily armed and armored fighter is to do the job the Air Forces says it can, more room for growth is needed than there is in Republic’s big, spanking-new plant.

Pleased as anyone at the Air Forces’ recognition of P-47’s good qualities was the Thunderbolt’s father, a quiet, wiry onetime Russian Army artillerist named Alexander Kartveli. In the great group effort of aviation design, many a man who has put new craft in the air has escaped public attention. One such is 45-year-old Designer Kartveli.

After World War I, Artillerist Kartveli went to France, studied aeronautics, supported himself for a year by a trapeze act in a circus. Meanwhile he learned to fly. His passion was the all-metal airplane. He designed one in 1927—a failure. But by last fall he was a recognized designer at Republic, the head of a department of 200 engineers (who call him Mister).

P-47 was his design from the first sheet of paper up, but when Republic set out to patent it in his name they ran into Kartveli trouble. Three days were lost persuading stubborn Alexander Kartveli that he should sign the application alone, and not, as he insisted, append the names of some 125 engineer helpers.

Today Bachelor Kartveli, like other top-drawer ideamen in aviation, is busy about next year’s design. But sometimes he goes out on the field to watch his 2,000-h.p. (Pratt & Whitney) Thunderbolt in the air. He’s proud of the beast. “A nice plane,” he admits, in an accent tinged with French, rather than Russian. “But she’s too big.” Airmen who fly the beast could argue with him, but they don’t. They know it’s an esthete’s criticism.