During the fall of 1987, Fairchild Corporation (then Republic's parent company) destroyed Republic's corporate archives. Joshua Stoff, the curator of the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Long Island, wrote in "Air & Space Magazine" that, upon being invited to have a last look at the archives, he surreptitiously took one document with him. That lone surviving document was a contract for 225 P-47Bs from Republic for the US Army Air Corps at a cost of $16,275,657.50 (War Department Contract #15850, dated September 13, 1940). It is now housed at the museum.