Republic F-105 Thunderchief

The Republic F-105 Thunderchief, known to its crews as the Thud, was a single-seat, single-engine fighter-bomber that served with the United States Air Force from 1958 to 1984. It was designed to carry a single nuclear weapon internally on high-speed, low-altitude penetration missions, could reach Mach 2, and when it entered service it was the largest single-seat, single-engine combat aircraft in history at about 50,000 pounds. It first flew in 1955, and of the 833 built it flew most of the strike missions of the early Vietnam War, with over 20,000 sorties. The two-seat F-105F and F-105G Wild Weasel versions became the first dedicated aircraft for suppressing enemy surface-to-air missile defenses. It is the only American aircraft to have been removed from combat because of its high loss rates.