The One Legged Immigrant Who Built the P-47 Thunderbolt and Was Kicked Out Before It Flew

In 1915, a 21-year-old Russian naval pilot was shot down on his first combat mission. His leg was amputated below the knee. The military told him he would never fly again. He flew 57 more missions on a wooden prosthesis and became the leading naval ace in the Russian Empire. After the revolution exiled him, Alexander de Seversky crossed the world with nothing. He ran a restaurant in Manhattan. He filed 364 patents. He built the first gyroscopically stabilized bombsight. Then he founded Seversky Aircraft Corporation on Long Island and began designing pursuit fighters for the U.S. Army Air Corps — personally test-flying them on one leg. His company never turned a profit. In 1939, while Seversky was traveling abroad, his own board of directors voted him out, removed his name from the company, and renamed it Republic Aviation Corporation. Alexander Kartveli — the chief designer Seversky had hired — stayed on. Kartveli took the design lineage that began with Seversky's P-35 fighter and built the P-47 Thunderbolt, the heaviest single-engine fighter of World War II. 15,686 were produced. More than any other American fighter. A 4.6-to-1 kill ratio. Eight .50-caliber machine guns. A machine that could absorb damage that would have destroyed any other fighter in any air force on earth. While the aircraft he helped create were winning the air war over Europe, Seversky wrote a bestselling book — Victory Through Air Power — that Walt Disney turned into an animated film. Churchill screened it at the Quebec Conference. The one-legged immigrant who was kicked out of his own company shaped the Allied bombing strategy that his former company's aircraft would carry out. His name was never put back on the building. It didn't need to be. It was in the blueprints. #P47Thunderbolt #RepublicAviation #AlexanderDeSeversky #WWII #WW2 #Aviation #WW2History #MilitaryHistory #FighterPlane #WorldWarII #AviationHistory #Thunderbolt #WW2Aircraft #Documentary #MilitaryAviation