In the annals of military aviation, one such aircraft was the Republic F-84 Thunderjet, which earned its laurels not as a dogfighter but as a formidable ground-attack aircraft during the Korean War. Though conceived to be a high-performance fighter, the true role of the Thunderjet was actually how well it adapted to the rude realities of ground support missions.
The F-84 began in 1944 when Alexander Kartveli was seeking to produce a jet successor to his legendary P-47 Thunderbolt. The resulting XP-84 Thunderjet featured a J-35 turbojet engine and fuel stored in leading-edge wingtip tanks. Early setbacks with maintenance and stability were solved with the introduction of the F-84D model, placing the Thunderjet as a reliable and maintainable airplane.
The quite solidly built Thunderjet, being what it was heavy was a prerequisite in close air support sorties. Capable of carrying 6,000 pounds of external ordnance bombs, napalm, and the F-84 became an integral part of many operations against the enemy’s airfields, supply lines, and points of troop concentration. Its participation in the raid on the Sui-ho Dam in June 1952 underlined its part in the Korean War, which was a result of electricity throughout North Korea being knocked out for two weeks. This raid now forms part of a wider campaign aimed at crippling the power supply and shows how air power can have strategic value in destroying key infrastructure.
It was not fast or as agile as the attacking MiG-15s but was robust, referred to as heavy by the Thunderjet pilots, tougher, and more heavily armed. It wasn’t a high-altitude combatant, they allowed F-86 Sabres to contest that right the Thunderjets reliably held their own in suppressive ground operations against the enemy. Thunderjets would fly 86,000 missions during the war, dropping 61,000 tons of bombs and napalm canisters 60 percent of all ground targets destroyed by the U.S. Air Force throughout the conflict.
The point to top it all off is that the F-84 showed its solidity in the most extreme conditions of combat, returning, often with extensive battle damage, from sorties and still flying. In June 1952, eighty-four Thunderjets destroyed 90 percent of the Sui-ho Dam complex, which seriously disrupted North Korean logistics and military operations. The raid was not without its political repercussions either, where it fueled anti-war opposition in the British parliament; meanwhile, hawks in the U.S. argued that the raid should have been conducted much sooner.
New technologies and capabilities introduced with the F-84, such as in-flight refueling and tactical nuclear weapons carriage capability, raised the bar on what was possible and expected from a fighter aircraft. These features increased the scope of operations that the U.S. Air Force could conduct, informing subsequent designs of military aircraft. The F-84’s legacy is further reflected both in the extended life of the type well past the Korean War in a variety of configurations and roles, as well as in its adoption by a plethora of allied nations under the MDAP military assistance program.
By the late 1950s, the Air Force began phasing out all versions of the F-84 in favor of the supersonic F-100 Super Sabre and F-105 Thunderchief. The Thunderjet, however, helped prove how flexible and resilient military strategies and technologies would have to be to keep up with combatants, particularly during the Korean War.