When Seversky left for Europe on a sales tour in the winter of 1938–39, the Board reorganized the operation on October 13, 1939, renamed as Republic Aviation Corporation with Kellett becoming the new president. Seversky sued for redress but while legal actions dragged on, the board of directors voted him out of the company he had created. Republic Aviation would become an industrial behemoth during World War II designing and producing the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt and in postwar years, a continuing line of successful fighter aircraft before being acquired by Fairchild in 1965.