Oct

September/October Dakota Territory Air Museum’s P-47 Update

October 31, 2018

Update by Chuck Cravens

This very large passageway is the carburetor and intercooler air intake duct. The strangely shaped structure is the main cool air intake to the intercooler. The upper end in this image leads forward to the air intake at the bottom of the cowl. The smaller opening on the right leads back to the air cleaner just ahead of the turbine. The large opening face down on the table is where the duct attaches to the intercooler.

Update

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A restoration like this one requires repeated fitting, trial assembly, disassembly for painting, and eventually permanent reassembly. This month was all about details as the guys take care of final touches before disassembling the upper fuselage for deburring and paint. Once this is finished, the next step will be permanent reassembly.

Ducts, Turbos and Intercooler

We’ve shown many images of the ducting and intercooler because they are part are a very complex system that will be made functional in this P-47 restoration. The turbo-supercharger system was responsible for the stellar high altitude performance of the Thunderbolt.