Republic F-105 Thunderchief

The Thunderchief — "Thud" to everyone who flew or fixed it — was the largest single-seat, single-engine combat aircraft in history when it entered service, and it remained so. It was conceived as a nuclear strike fighter and ended as the conventional workhorse of the air war over North Vietnam.

Design

Republic's Alexander Kartveli drew a heavy, mid-wing aircraft around an internal weapons bay and a very large turbojet. The forward-swept intake ramps in the wing roots are the recognition feature; the area-ruled fuselage and the all-moving tail gave it its speed. Later D models carried a bomb load on external pylons that would have been respectable for a medium bomber.

Combat

From 1965 the Thud flew the majority of USAF strike sorties into North Vietnam from Thai bases, with losses concentrated in the 1965–68 period of Rolling Thunder. The two-seat F models, converted with radar-homing receivers and anti-radiation missiles, pioneered the Wild Weasel role; the G model was the definitive version.

Reading the dossier

The spec sheet on the right is deliberately short: the figures a reader needs to compare this aircraft to another, and nothing that requires a footnote. Longer discussion goes in the article, not here.