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Fighter aircraft nicknames

gaucho_59 said:
Boeing DID officially name some of its products... To wit: B-17 "Flying Fortress"
and B-29 "Superfortress"... just to name a couple of them....
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Are you absolutely certain that Boeing assigned those names, or was it the military, whose job it also was to assign the B-17 and B-29 (and all others) according to their procurement contracts? I could be wrong, but I believe that it was and still is the military that "names" their aircraft. At any rate, even if the Boeing did name those bomers themselves, they certainly have not done so with many (if any, save the 787) since then that I'm aware of.

gaucho_59 said:
One MUST remember to express one's opinions as SUCH... Facts are facts and are irrefutable... opinions... often err albeit having been sincerely expressed in one's belief of "knowing" the truth...
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The only opinion I've expressed so far has been about the originality of some of the more modern aircraft names. Speaking of which, Thanks for the info BB! :icon29:
 
VinFlyer said:
Well, not more than I wanted but rather more than I'd hoped for. But thank you guys, this has been very informative already. It's an interesting subject I might investigate further on. But for now I at least have some kind of answer for the visitor who came up with this question :)
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I think what you've learned is that:

1) Aircraft usually have "Plain Language" Names.
2) Manufacturers name their aircraft, which sometimes transition to the Services purchasing the aircraft.
3) Services may or may not designate aircraft by the manufacturer name, and use whatever naming convention they choose, often changing that convention on the fly, or whenever the they feel the whim, sometime after using one name for years.
4) Service members often name aircraft something else entirely which may or may not become the official name.
5) When a commodity is in high demand and short supply, he price will rise.

Sorry, that last one is Adam Smith.....

Is this simple enough?
 
B-17 and B-29...

Tom Clayton said:
Are you absolutely certain that Boeing assigned those names, or was it the military, whose job it also was to assign the B-17 and B-29 (and all others) according to their procurement contracts? I could be wrong, but I believe that it was and still is the military that "names" their aircraft. At any rate, even if the Boeing did name those bomers themselves, they certainly have not done so with many (if any, save the 787) since then that I'm aware of.


The only opinion I've expressed so far has been about the originality of some of the more modern aircraft names. Speaking of which, Thanks for the info BB! :icon29:
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Yes, the names "Flying Fortress" and "Superfortress" although not originally conceived by Boeing engineers... were indeed copyrighted by Boeing... to wit:
"When the Model 299 was rolled out on 28 July 1935, bristling with multiple machine gun installations, Richard Williams, a reporter for the Seattle Times coined the name "Flying Fortress" with his comment "Why, it's a flying fortress!".[SUP][136][/SUP] Boeing was quick to see the value of the name and had it trademarked for use."
As an anesthesiologist, I have always been very careful to get things from the horse's mouth... very seldom expressed opinions as fact.. but reserched question and came with the right answer... even when it lost me bets... like believing the Genovese lady was named Kathy... when the wife said it was Kitty... looked it up and alas the old bag was right... and I was WRONG... LOL

103*: Meilinger, Phillip S.. "When the Fortress Went Down". airforce-magazine.com, October 2004 87 (10). http://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2004/October 202004/1004fortress.aspx.
 
Further to your question...

Tom Clayton said:
Are you absolutely certain that Boeing assigned those names, or was it the military, whose job it also was to assign the B-17 and B-29 (and all others) according to their procurement contracts? I could be wrong, but I believe that it was and still is the military that "names" their aircraft. At any rate, even if the Boeing did name those bomers themselves, they certainly have not done so with many (if any, save the 787) since then that I'm aware of.


The only opinion I've expressed so far has been about the originality of some of the more modern aircraft names. Speaking of which, Thanks for the info BB! :icon29:
Click to expand...

Boeing named the B-50/KB "Superfortress", the B-52 Stratofortress, its E-3 AWACS "Sentry", and the Boeing E-6 "Mercury"... to name just a few...
However, aircraft like the P-26 'affectionately nicknamed the "Peashooter" by its pilots' was not amongst those...
 
So for the WWII era planes, Boeing took someone else's name which was not trademarked (because the military rarely does) and applied their own trademarks. Not that I'm complaining, because it's done every single day. And the Pentagon probably could give a rat's patootie anyway. For the post-war and later military, good for Boeing for coming up with their own and not letting the less imaginative do it. (And yes, that's just an opinion - to me, just adding "II" to the end of a name is a cop-out.)

Huub - not sure, but this wiki article refers to it as a "nickname," and then links that term to a more generalized article on wide-body aircraft.
 
Guess a dead horse can be beaten, and beaten, and beaten... lol

Tom Clayton said:
So for the WWII era planes, Boeing took someone else's name which was not trademarked (because the military rarely does) and applied their own trademarks. Not that I'm complaining, because it's done every single day. And the Pentagon probably could give a rat's patootie anyway. For the post-war and later military, good for Boeing for coming up with their own and not letting the less imaginative do it. (And yes, that's just an opinion - to me, just adding "II" to the end of a name is a cop-out.)

Huub - not sure, but this wiki article refers to it as a "nickname," and then links that term to a more generalized article on wide-body aircraft.
Click to expand...

The wiki article is very nice as all of theirs are... however... one must remember that these are not really authoritative sources...[Wikipedia is open source: i.e. anyone who thinks changes are needed can append them] and often inexact... Researching names, dates, places, etc. has to be done per forse through sources of recognized historical validity [official accounts, authoritative articles in professional journals, some books, etc.]... otherwise... ONE keeps on perpetrating misinformation that then become part of so called "urban legends"...which people swear by... [but are most often not true]
To wit: The mere reference to Jumbo Jet as a "nickname" in the article belies that it is not part of the a formal nomenclature...[originated by factory, airline company, army, etc.] Yet... someone might interpret it as being an official appellation... go figure...
 
"I still believe...."

gaucho_59 said:
The wiki article is very nice as all of theirs are... however... one must remember that these are not really authoritative sources...[Wikipedia is open source: i.e. anyone who thinks changes are needed can append them] and often inexact... Researching names, dates, places, etc. has to be done per forse through sources of recognized historical validity [official accounts, authoritative articles in professional journals, some books, etc.]... otherwise... ONE keeps on perpetrating misinformation that then become part of so called "urban legends"...which people swear by... [but are most often not true]
To wit: The mere reference to Jumbo Jet as a "nickname" in the article belies that it is not part of the a formal nomenclature...[originated by factory, airline company, army, etc.] Yet... someone might interpret it as being an official appellation... go figure...
Click to expand...

If you still believe it is the service that gives names to aircraft... how come North American named the original RAF P-51 project Mustangs I, II, and III (conceived in a hotel room in London during the Blitz) and the name then persisted in the P-51 variants for the USAAC???? Also... notice that on the official description usually shown forwards of the cockpit and below on the starboard side the same reads:

NORTH AMERICAN AVN P-51 B
USAAC Sr Nr.: **********
Crew Wt. 200 lb
etc.

[the convention persisting even to the jet age... basically... 1. Manufacturer, 2. Service, 3. Contract Procurement number , crew wt. data, etc. ]
and it never mentions the name MUSTANG, PHANTOM, as nauseam...?

Reminds me of my wife again... who cannot "believe" the story of the Angel Moroni appearing to Joseph Smith (to her Mormonism is a 'cult')... but believes Moses parted the Red Sea and Jesus multiplied the bread.... Man... it one can believe that God works in misterious ways... or Moses parting the Red Sea... what is so strange about an angel appearing to a young man in Attica, NY in the 1800s?????????
Needless to say... I am an agnostic... (if you can show it to me... I believe... until then, I reserve judgment)...
 
gaucho_59 said:
If you still believe it is the service that gives names to aircraft......
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The service can have something to do with it, especially when we Brits get involved; hence Wildcat/Martlet etc. The classic example is the P-40; officially they were all produced as Warhawks, but that was never a name that was liked over here - so if it had a roundel on it the name was either Tomahawk or Kittyhawk. Go figure.

Re. the Mustang, I always understood that it was the RAF who called it that, but you could well be right gaucho - however, don't forget that the first examples delivered to the USAAC were called Apache, but the name Mustang eventually became the accepted norm.
 
So in a nutshell...

The sources of, and reasons behind different aircraft names, official or not, are as varied as the aircraft to which they're attached. There is no all-reaching rhyme or reason. Various entities, whether military or corporate, may or may not have their own systems. The only way to know any aircraft name's history is to research that single plane on its own.

How's that...?
 
And Huub, I think I have a somewhat more definitive answer for your 747 question, this one being from "the horse's mouth," so to speak. Boeing's own Commercial Airplanes landing page only lists one aircraft with a name, that being the 787 Dreamliner:
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/products.html

But I think it's interesting to note that the term "jumbo jet" is so closely associated with the 747 family that even this specialized Google search pulled the 747's main page as the first result, even though the term is not found anywhere on that page, not even in the source code.
 
R.I.P.

Tom Clayton said:
And Huub, I think I have a somewhat more definitive answer for your 747 question, this one being from "the horse's mouth," so to speak. Boeing's own Commercial Airplanes landing page only lists one aircraft with a name, that being the 787 Dreamliner:
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/products.html

But I think it's interesting to note that the term "jumbo jet" is so closely associated with the 747 family that even this specialized Google search pulled the 747's main page as the first result, even though the term is not found anywhere on that page, not even in the source code.
Click to expand...

After, in the inmortal words of the bard "... much ado about nothing" ... my original answer to the "Queering Dutchman" seems to be vindicated... there is no one answer to his queery... the much castigated deceased equine has, I think, found a final resting place..... R.I.P. - and on to more productive endeavours... (otherwise this thread will go on forever!) Happy Flying...
 
gaucho_59 said:
To further clarify... some aircraft such as the AC-47 gunship conversion... acquired "double or multiple" identities... [ i.e.: it was dubbed "Puff the Magic Dragon" by ground troops and crews (unofficial)... aka "Spooky" (this one an official code name... just as in WW2, aircraft like the Mitsubishi Zero-sen were given a specific code name...: Zeke (indicating a distinct variant... [or Mark as british would call variants... Mk 1, 2, etc)...with clipped wingtips.]
Code names (officially sanctioned) used in aircraft recognition charts (Dinah, Val -for Valerie-, etc.) seem to have been the whim of whoever produced the recognition charts... or sometimes... as in the case of a type Zero-sen (Zeke) they invoked the initial letter..."Z"
Notwithstanding, the final verdict is still that there is no one-valid logic to these appellations... As someone pointed out... Grumman skunkwork products received feline monikers clear from the cats of the 40s to our latter days Tomcat... (that is indeed a tradition with the manufacturer... and offically sanctioned at that too)
Even the phonetic alphabet used to clarify radio communications has undergone changes over the years... the old Able, Baker, Charlie of WW2 and Korea... became Alpha, Bravo, Charlie started back in 1959 when I first came upon the military scene as a young draftee... Before and during WW2, Germans used proper names to distinguish variants of a type... like Bf 109s variants: Gustav for the G model, Emil for the Es, etc. Even the plane type itself Bf 109... 110, etc. (for Bayerische Fluzeug Werke) was also known as the Me 109, 110, etc. (for Willy Messerschmitt).
The purpose of my discourse is to throw some light on the subject (at the risk of sounding pedantic) in terms of its origins (very diffuse...) rather than to express a personal opinion about "Academy grads" etc. ... (as we all know... opinions are like anal orifices... everyone is entitled to one... but they remain holes nonetheless... lol)

While on the subject... my wife who has just returned from Afghanistan (medical type)...cited in one of her blogs that the SAW (S-quad A-utomatic W-eapon replacing the M-60 MG which in turn replaced the old BAR of my days) was so nicknamed because it could cut a guy in half... and so she was told by the SF guys she treated and treated her to firing it on the range... Well.. as explained above.. SAW is an official nomenclature...that refers to its purpose... whereas the BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle).. also offical appellative refers to its manufacturer...
So... as we see... there are no hard and fast rules on "nicknames"...

View attachment 45931
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I never heard that about the SAW. Neat - though I can see why it makes sense!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cybrslydr/5793408890/in/set-72157626205272993
 
The 787 Dreamliner is not the first airliner to be named by Boeing. In 1939, the 307 Stratoliner was developed alongside the B-17 and shared wings, tail and engines with the Flying Fortress. It was followed up in the 40s by the 377 Stratocruiser which was based on the C-97 Stratofreighter.

ETA: I just remembered an earlier one. The 221 Monomail although it was more of a mailplane than an airliner.
 
That reminds me of one other that I forgot... I guess the marketing dept. still had the same idea when they built the B-47 Stratojet.
 
The UK does have an official naming policy*, although it was more obvious in the past when we tended to make our own aircraft and introduce new ones more often than once a decade. It was most obvious in the 30s and 40s when heavy bombers were named after cities, fighters after meteorological phenomena, naval fighters after sea birds, naval bombers after game fish etc. There were/are exceptions to this rule, mostly when it was realised calling foreign aircraft by a different name didn't help when it came to ordering spares and of course naval conversions of land planes just had Sea appended to the front (officially it was initially Sea Spitfire not Seafire).
The book 'Names with Wings' by Gordon Wansbrough-White goes into it in far more detail than even I was interested in, although it still doesn't explain why anyone ever thought Spider Crab was a good name for a fighter, it does mention DH weren't impressed though!

*It's had more than one so things aren't always consistent and it occasionally applies to engines as well.
 
Another lesser-known USN/USMC plane to receive nicknames was the Douglas F3D (later EF-10) Skyknight, aka "Willie the Whale" and "Drut" (turd spelled backwards). :icon_lol:
 
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