How did the P-47's landing gear fit in the wing?

Short answer

Thanks to a telescopic main landing gear: each leg lengthened by 9 in (23 cm) when extended and, when retracted, shortened by that same nine inches, so it folded inward into compact wheel wells. Republic adopted this to lighten the legs and fit machine guns in the wings.

Published: November 1, 2026 · Updated: November 1, 2026 · Edited by Above Ten Thousand · Editorial policy

How did the P-47's landing gear fit in the wing?

Pioneer RQ-2A UAV

Legs that lengthened as they extended

The P-47's main landing gear fit in the wing because each leg was telescopic. The mechanism lengthened it by 9 in (23 cm) when extended and, when retracted, shortened it by that same nine inches, allowing it to fold inward into compact wheel wells.

A big propeller and wing-mounted guns

Republic adopted that solution to reduce the size and weight of the landing gear legs and to be able to install machine guns in the wings. The other constraint was the large-diameter propeller, which had to be accommodated without sacrificing wing armament or structural efficiency.

What else went in the wing and under the cockpit

The armament consisted of eight .50 caliber (12.7 mm) Browning AN/M2 machine guns, four in each wing, staggered to feed from adjacent ammunition boxes holding 350 rounds each. The fuselage, meanwhile, housed the turbosupercharger: the engine's exhaust gases were routed through a pair of ducts with waste gates on either side of the cockpit to the turbine, located low in the fuselage, roughly midway between the cockpit and the tail. That turbine was mounted inside the fuselage, about 22 feet behind the propeller, with the exhaust carried from the engine through jacketed pipes. The main and auxiliary self-sealing fuel tanks were installed beneath the cockpit, with a total capacity of 305 US gallons (254 imp gal; 1,155 L).