Blitz Week depicts P-47 Thunderbolts during the summer 1943 air offensive when the U.S. Eighth Air Force intensified attacks against targets in Germany and occupied Europe. The artwork is paired with wreckage from a P-47 later lost during the Battle of the Bulge.
The P-47 Relic: 42-22459
P-47D-2-RA 42-22459 was serving with the 406th Fighter Group when it was hit by heavy ground fire during a mission near Bastogne on 27 December 1944. The Thunderbolt crashed in the Ardennes Forest.
Much of the aircraft was removed after the war, but smaller fragments remained at the site and were later recovered. Those surviving pieces provide the physical relic associated with the artwork.
The Thunderbolt in the Air War
The P-47 combined a powerful radial engine, heavy armament and exceptional diving performance. Early in its European service it fought primarily as an escort and air-superiority fighter; as longer-range escorts became available, Thunderbolt units increasingly shifted toward ground attack.
The rugged P-47 Thunderbolt became both a fighter and a formidable ground-attack aircraft.
By late 1944, P-47 groups were attacking vehicles, rail lines, artillery and troop concentrations across the battlefield. The fate of 42-22459 near Bastogne reflects the hazards of that low-level work.
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