Scroll to the bottom of this diary to see updates added on 10/29/13 and 10/30/13.
I originally planned to put irony quotes around the word Thundercraft, since no USAF pilot I know would be caught dead using the term. But what the hell, it was Republic's collective name for the fighter-bombers they designed and built from the 1940s to the 1970s, important aircraft with long combat records, so I guess they earned the right to call them Thundercraft … even if it makes 'em sound like something the ThunderCats would fly!
If you click on the magazine ad to your left you can see it full size on Flickr. In it you'll see that Republic … or at least their PR people … actually called them Thunder-craft, with a hyphen.
Here's the quick and dirty on Republic and its Thundercraft:
The enterprise started out as the Seversky Aircraft Company in Farmingdale, Long Island, New York. Seversky built aircraft from 1931 to 1939 and was most known for a mid-1930s design, the P-35 pursuit fighter. In 1939 the corporate board evicted the founder, Alexander de Seversky, and reorganized as the Republic Aviation Corporation. As Republic, the company became famous for a series of fighters bearing Thunder names, including: