– JACK THE RIPPER –
Republic P-47D Thunderbolt
333rd (or 73rd) Fighter Squadron, 318th Fighter Group, 7th Air Force
Hawaii; Saipan, Marianas Islands
Emblem of the 333rd Fighter Squadron

I have very little information about what "Jack the Ripper" looked like. I know it was a razorbacked P-47D, assigned to ither the 73rd or the 333rd Fighter Squadron. The above drawing is based on what other 333rd aircraft looked like, with the yellow squadron color applied in bands around nose, waist, and tail empennage. If she was from the 73rd, the yellow markings about would be black instead. I don't know what Ripper's serial number or indvidual aircraft number might have been, so I put these in the illustration using all zeroes as placekeepers. Some photos of 333rd aircraft show the anitglare panel as very dark, so it's possible that it was black rather than the standard AAF olive drab I show here. The way the name appears is 60% guesswork (see the first photo below). Since Dad went in with the first attacks on Saipan, and the 333rd was held back for several weeks after that, it may be safer to assume Jack the Ripper was assigned to the 73rd "Bar Flies" squadron (in which case, see the less colorful profile below!). Clearly, I ain't gonna be able to model this plane very well at all.

This is not dad, but a friend of his from back home sitting in Jack the Ripper's cockpit at Mokalaia Airfield, Hawaii. This is the only photo I have to go on. It shows the plane to be a bare metal P-47D razorback model with an anti-glare panel. The individual aircraft number is large, painted rather than stenciled, and ends in a 0, 2, 3, 6, 8 or 9. 333rd aircraft had 2-digit numbers. If the name was painted in black, then that settles the question of the color of the anti-glare panel. The canopy frame is apparently unpainted, which means this isn't the same plane shown in the below photo, or the opening page photo - unless it was painted later, or this photo is just too glarey. I'd have to guess at the way Dad lettered the rest of the name, and I don't know whether it's on the right side also, and if so, which way it angles. ARGH! Just to confuse matters, note that the tail of the plane in the background has a dark band, that could be blue (19th FS), black (73rd FS) or yellow (333rd FS).

Dad in the cockpit of a"Jug" on Hawaii, with that same friend from back home standing on the wing. The P-47 normally carries eight .50 caliber machine guns, but here it's been stripped of all but two and had the pilot's armor removed. In this lightened configuration, Dad used this Jug to intercept Japanese high-altitude "robot" balloons that drifted toward the US in the jetstream with time-released bombs. It's possible that the plane is "Jack the Ripper," but no squadron or personal markings are showing. Considering that some film of the time photographed yellow very dark, it's impossible to tell exactly what the color of the nose band is. It might just be an alert aircraft that Dad only used that day. However, the cockpit closeup photo above shows the same friend sitting in the cockpit, so it's possible this IS Ripper. The photo of Dad in the cockpit that heads the previous page can NOT be Ripper, since the photo is dated about a year after Ripper was lost over Tinian. Again confusing things is the olive drab Jug in the background with a light fuselage band that could be either white (73rd FS) or yellow (333rd FS).