As a kid, my dad and I would build model airplanes. Most of them were from WWII, and we would hang them from the ceiling as if they were dogfighting one another. Without a doubt, my favorite was the P-47C near the window.

In 1942, the Thunderbolt was America's best chance against the Luftwaffe in the skies over Europe. The rugged, outrageously powerful Pratt and Whitney engine gave performance never seen before and the testaments to its ability to bring pilots home despite catastrophic damage are many. To this day, "the Jug" is the most numerous American fighter plane ever built, and it's still my favorite.

So you can probably imagine how excited I was when I found out they were making a DCS expansion for it. The whole plane, completely modeled with a fully interactive 3D cockpit. Every switch, every button, every last detail. But the project has been delayed for quite some time now. Today, I found out why.

Founded and lead by Russian and Georgian ex-pats who managed to escape the Bolsheviks during the first World War, Republic Aviation made several major contributions to US airpower thanks to their brilliant designer Alexander Kartveli. His projects included the P-47 Thunderbolt, F-105 Thunderchief and A-10 Warthog to name a few.

The reason the DCS expansion is delayed is because all of Republic Aviation's corporate archives were completely destroyed when they were shut down by their parent company in 1987. All the records, studies, drafts, every piece of data the company had about the aircraft they made was liquidated.

This is actually an old article, but you can read about it here -

http://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/when-republic-aviation-folded-69197851/?no-ist

Certainly, the US government might still have some records, and there are plenty of flight manuals and other material floating around in the public, but for someone to develop a truly realistic simulation of the P-47 (or any other Republic aircraft), it's not going to be easy.