Aircraft manufacturer | |
Fate | Acquired by Fairchild Aircraft |
Founded | 1931, reorganized as Republic Aviation, 1939 |
Founder | Alexander de Seversky, Paul Moore |
Defunct | 1965 |
Headquarters | Farmingdale, Long Island, New York, United States |
Website | http://sites.google.com/site/lirepublicairporths/ |
The Republic Aviation Corporation was an American aircraft manufacturer based in Farmingdale, Long Island, New York. Originally known as the Seversky Aircraft Company, the company was responsible for the design and production of many important military aircraft, including its most famous products: World War II's P-47 Thunderbolt fighter, the F-84 Thunderjet and F-105 Thunderchief jet fighters, as well as the A-10 Thunderbolt II close-support aircraft.
The Seversky Aircraft Company was founded in 1931 by Alexander de Seversky, a Russian expatriate and veteran World War I pilot who had lost a leg in the war. In the beginning, many of Seversky Aircraft's designers were Russian and Georgian engineers, including Michael Gregor and Alexander Kartveli, who would go on to design many of Republic's most famous aircraft.
After several failed attempts, Seversky Aircraft finally won a design competition for a new United States Army Air Corps fighter, and was awarded its first military contract in 1936 for the production of its Seversky P-35.
In 1939, Seversky Aircraft again entered in a military fighter competition, this time with the much improved AP-4. Unfortunately, the contract was instead awarded to the somewhat inferior Curtiss P-40, but the Army Air Corps were very pleased with the aircraft's medium- and high-altitude performance and ordered 13 additional AP-4s for testing.