The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt (nicknamed the "Jug") is a World War II-era fighter aircraft produced by the American company Republic Aviation from 1941 through 1945. One of the main United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) fighters, it found success in the European and Pacific theaters as an escort fighter well-suited to high-altitude air-to-air combat. It also served as the foremost American fighter-bomber in the ground-attack role.

The P-47 was noted for its firepower: its primary armament was eight .50-caliber machine guns, and it could carry 5-inch rockets or a bomb load of 2,500 lb (1,100 kg). When fully loaded, the aircraft weighed up to 8 tons, making it one of the heaviest fighters of the war. It was also noted for its ability to remain airworthy with battle damage.

The P-47 was designed around the powerful Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp 18-cylinder radial engine, which also powered the U.S. Navy/U.S. Marine Corps Grumman F6F Hellcat and Vought F4U Corsair. An advanced turbosupercharger ensured the aircraft's eventual dominance at high altitudes, while also influencing its size and design. The armored cockpit was relatively roomy and comfortable and the sliding bubble canopy introduced on the D variant offered good visibility.

The P-47 also served with the air forces of France, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, and with Allied Mexican and Brazilian squadrons. It is the namesake of a later U.S. ground-attack aircraft, the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II.

The P-47 Thunderbolt was designed by Alexander Kartveli, a man of Georgian descent. It was to replace the Seversky P-35 developed earlier by a Russian immigrant named Alexander P. de Seversky. Both had fled from their homeland, Tbilisi, Georgia, to escape the Bolsheviks. In 1939, Republic Aviation designed the AP-4 demonstrator powered by a Pratt & Whitney R-1830 radial engine with a belly-mounted turbocharger. A small number of Republic P-43 Lancers were built, but Republic had been working on an improved P-44 Rocket with a more powerful engine, as well as on the AP-10 fighter design. The latter was a lightweight aircraft powered by the Allison V-1710 liquid-cooled V-12 engine and armed with two .50 in (12.7 mm) M2 Browning machine guns mounted in the nose and four .30 in (7.62 mm) M1919 Browning machine guns mounted in the wings. The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) backed the project and gave it the designation XP-47.

In the spring of 1940, Republic and the USAAC concluded that the XP-44 and the XP-47 were inferior to Luftwaffe fighters. Republic tried to improve the design, proposing the XP-47A, but this failed. Kartveli then designed a much larger fighter, which was offered to the USAAC in June 1940, which ordered a prototype in September as the XP-47B. The XP-47A, which had little in common with the new design, was abandoned. The XP-47B was of all-metal construction (except for the fabric-covered tail control surfaces) with elliptical wings, with a straight leading edge that was slightly swept back. The P-47's airfoil section was developed by A. Kartveli and was designated as Republic S-3. The air-conditioned cockpit was roomy, and the pilot's seat was comfortable—"like a lounge chair", as one pilot later put it. The canopy door initially hinged upward. Main and auxiliary self-sealing fuel tanks were placed under the cockpit, giving a total fuel capacity of 305 US gal (254 imp gal; 1,155 L).

Power came from a Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp two-row, 18-cylinder radial engine producing 2,000 hp (1,500 kW) — the same engine that powered the prototype Vought XF4U-1 fighter to just over 400 mph (640 km/h) in October 1940—with the Double Wasp on the XP-47B turning a four-bladed Curtiss Electric constant-speed propeller of 146 in (3.7 m) in diameter. The loss of the AP-4 prototype to an engine fire ended Kartveli's experiments with tight-fitting cowlings, so the engine was placed in a broad cowling that opened at the front in a "horse collar"-shaped ellipse. The cowling admitted cooling air for the engine, left and right oil coolers, and the turbosupercharger intercooler system. The engine exhaust gases were routed into a pair of wastegate-equipped pipes that ran along each side of the cockpit to drive the turbosupercharger turbine at the bottom of the fuselage, about halfway between cockpit and tail. At full power, the pipes glowed red at their forward ends and the turbine spun at 21,300 rpm. The complicated turbosupercharger system with its ductwork gave the XP-47B a deep fuselage, and the wings had to be mounted in a relatively high position. This was difficult, since long-legged main landing gear struts were needed to provide ground clearance for the enormous propeller. To reduce the size and weight of the undercarriage struts, and so wing-mounted machine guns could be fitted, each strut was fitted with a mechanism by which it telescoped out 9 in (23 cm) while it extended.

The XP-47B was very heavy compared with contemporary single-engined fighters, with an empty weight of 9,900 lb (4,500 kg), or 65% more than the YP-43. Kartveli said, "It will be a dinosaur, but it will be a dinosaur with good proportions". The armament was eight .50-caliber (12.7 mm) "light-barrel" Browning AN/M2 machine guns, four in each wing. The guns were staggered to allow feeding from side-by-side ammunition boxes, each with 350 rounds. All eight guns gave the fighter a combined rate of fire around 100 rounds per second.