Designed by Alexander Kartveli, Republic Aviation’s chief engineer, the P-47 was one of the outstanding designs of World War II, being the mount of some of Americas top scoring aces, undertaking some 546,000 combat sorties between March 1943 and August 1945, during which 1,934,000 operational hours were accumulated.

The MiG 17 was a total redesign of the MiG 15, some 6,000 being built in the Soviet Union, and large numbers were built under licence in Poland (as the Lim 5), China (as the J-5, J-5A and JJ-5), and Czechoslovakia.

The Messerschmitt Bf 109, the most important Luftwaffe fighter of World War II, was produced in larger numbers than any other fighter aircraft ever built, some 33,000 odd being completed.

The Hawker Sea Fury was the last piston-engine fighter-bomber to be manufactured in quantity in the United Kingdom.

The Hurricane was designed by Sydney Camm to Air Ministry specification F36/34, the prototype (K5083) built at Kingston making its first flight on 6 November 1935, the first production aircraft flying on 12 October 1937, and the first unit to receive the aircraft being No 111 squadron at Northolt.

The Tempest was a development of the Typhoon designed by a team lead by Sydney Camm, being a logical development of the earlier aircraft with the Napier Sabre IV engine

The Hawker Typhoon was designed by Sydney Camm as an interceptor fighter to replace the Hurricane.

The FW 190 was designed by Kurt Tank, technical director of the Focke Wulf Flugzeugbau, and was one of the most successful fighter aircraft of World War II, commencing life powered by a two-row BMW radial engine, final variants being powered by Junkers Jumo in-line engines.

The prototype of the Venom series (VV612) was flown for the first time on 2 September 1949, and subsequently it was built in two main variants, the FB Mk 1 and the FB Mk 4, some 383 and 150 examples of each model respectively being built for the RAF.

The P-40 series of fighter aircraft commenced with the XP-40 prototype and developed through the P-40C Tomahawk, which was used by the RAAF in the Middle-East campaign, and ultimately to the Kittyhawk.

In an attempt to increase the high-altitude performance of the P-40E Kittyhawk, Curtiss undertook the redesign of the aircraft to take a British-built Rolls Royce Merlin 28 engine with a single-stage, two-speed supercharger, and this was installed in a P-40D airframe and flown for the first time as the XP-40F

The suddenness of the Japanese onslaught at the beginning of the war in the Pacific, the speed at which Japanese forces moved, and the possibility of fighter aircraft not being available from overseas sources, led to the decision to design and build a fighter aircraft as soon as possible to

The CA-15 was the second single-seat fighter designed and built in Australia for service in the Pacific Theatre of Operations, the Boomerang being the first.

In an attempt to increase the performance of the indigenous Boomerang fighter, consideration was given to the increase in the power of the engine installed and to this end, as the Twin Wasp engine then fitted was not supercharged sufficiently to permit adequate high-altitude operations, it was decided to obtain