American War Eagles: The P-47 Thunderbolt

The piolts who flew it called it "The Unbreakable" and "The Plane that can do anything". They were not wrong. P-47s often came back from combat shot full of holes, their wings and control surfaces in tatters, but in one piece. They flew more than 546,000 combat sorties between March 1943 and August 1945, destroying 11874 enemy aircraft , 9000 locomotives and 6000 armoured vehicles and tanks. Only 0.7% of these remarkable machines were lost in combat.