This Republic F-84G Thunderjet is a restoration project that comes largely complete including a full F-84G airframe with an Allison J-35 jet engine, the aircraft is registered with the FAA and the airframe has been x-rayed – with results showing it’s in excellent restorable condition.
Unusually this sale encompasses not one but two unique aircraft, the Republic F-84G Thunderjet and a Grumman F9F Panther, both aircraft are for sale as a package with a price of $239,000 USD. There’s a significant industry surrounding warbirds like these in order to both restore them and maintain them for their new (typically well-heeled) owners, and some ambitious types restore them themselves, learning as they go.
The Republic F-84 Thunderjet was one of the first US jet fighters to emerge after World War 2, first flying in February 1946. The switch from piston-engined aircraft to jet aircraft happened reasonably rapidly once it was realised that jets were going to be markedly superior, and there was a battle for engineering supremacy between the USA, Britain, the Soviets, and a number of European countries.
Many early jets were often plagued with engineering issues and the F-84 Thunderjet was no exception.
The first three model iterations had a litany of issues, many caused by lack of testing due to rapid development timelines. By the time the F-84G model was released as a replacement for the F-84B, F-84GC, F-84GD, and F-84GD, the early development issues had been ironed out and the aircraft became known for its ruggedness, many pilots during the Korean War called the plane “The Iron Crowbar”.
The F-84G was powered by a single Allison J35-A-29 turbojet engine with 5,560 lbf of thrust, this gave the aircraft a maximum speed of 622 mph (1,001 km/h) or Mach 0.81, with a cruising speed of 475 mph (764 km/h), a combat range of 1,000 mi (1,600 km), a service ceiling of 40,500 ft (12,300 m), and a rate of climb of 3,765 ft/min (19.13 m/s).
Interestingly the Republic F-84G Thunderjet was the first US jet fighter to be able to refuel in the air, and it was the first to be capable of carrying a nuclear weapon – though no nuclear weapons were ever actually dropped from an F-84.
The armaments on a standard F-84G included 6 × .50 in (12.7 mm) M3 Browning machine guns, up to 4,450 lb (2,020 kg) of rockets and bombs, and there was an A-1CM or A-4 gunsight with AN/APG-30 or a Mk.18 ranging radar.
The Republic F-84G Thunderjet you see here requires a full restoration but it’s largely complete, and it would likely be a good starting point for the kind of people who know how to do this kind of work. That said, the kind of people who know how to restore vintage jet fighters are fairly small in number and their work is priced accordingly.
If you’d like to read more about the F-84G and the Grumman F9F Panther it comes with you can click here to visit the listing on Platinum Fighter Sales.
The F9F Panther is a similarly remarkable aircraft but I’ve run out of words to write about it here, if you like to read more about it you can click here and if you like to read more about the F-84 Thunderjet you can click here.
Images courtesy of Platinum Fighter Sales and the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force
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Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
