Military Aircraft Lists & Nicknames

[dhfan]

Personally, I use the terms "official nickname" and "unofficial nickname" to refer to, for example, Thunderbolt II and Warthog respectively for the A-10. It's kind of strange - the terms are oxymoronic and redundant, respectively, as nicknames are by definition informal - but it's the best solution for a weird situation.

You're still using the terms interchangeably.
If it's official, it's a name, not a nickname. If it's a nickname, it's unofficial.

"[Manufacturer] [Nickname]" - No. "[Manufacturer] [Name]"

The Brits will also throw in some sort of convoluted "series" nonsense for commercial aircraft that I have yet to fully understand. (e.g. AW.660, BAC 1-11, HS.125, Trident)

Only convoluted because of the forced amalgamation of, admittedly too many, UK aircraft companies.

AW.660 - Armstrong-Whitworth project number, so Armstrong-Whitworth Argosy.
BAC 1-11 - Originally designed by Hunting Aircraft, one of the constituents of BAC, so their project or drawing office number.
HS.125 - Originally DH.125 and designed and built at Hatfield by de Havilland. Briefly unofficially named Jet Dragon.
Trident (DH.121) - Initially designed and built by de Havilland. Three engines and, later, triplex autoland system
Likewise BAe.146 - Originally designed and built at Hatfield by Hawker-Siddeley but a de Havilland drawing office/project number.

[JohnB]

dhfan...
Wasn't the British Aerospace 146 marketed for a period as the "Avro"?

As you say, there are many instances in UK aviation where a type was designed by one firm but built by another...like the Miles Marathon eventually built by Handley Page.

Also, in the U.S. the DH 125 was marketed briefly (circa 1970 you can see ads under that name in period FLYING magazines) as the Beechcraft Hawker 125.
To make a convoluted story shorter (and I admit that I do not know the exact chronology, it then reverted (in the U.S. at least) to DH, then Hawker Siddley - HS.
At the end of production, it was owned (or at least marketed in North America) by Raytheon...the owner of Beech at the time.
I understand, generally pilots just referred to the type as "Hawkers".

As far as Americans understanding the finer points of UK aviation bureaucracy, the fact many well known manufacturers were part of larger groups adds another layer of confusion.
I'd guess few warbird fans would know (or care) that Supermarine was part of the Vickers Armstrong combine.Of course both of those companies built and sold aircraft separately under their own names in the past.

[dhfan]

Yes, the Avro RJ name infuriated me. The 146 was and always had been a DH design and had absolutely no connection to Avro.

When Hawker-Siddeley took over de Havilland - in theory it was a merger but in practice DH was just swallowed up - they said they were going to retain the DH name, particularly in the US as it had such a good reputation.
That lasted about 10 minutes...

As I recall, British Aerospace decided they didn't want anything to do with civil aircraft so they sold off their few remaining types.
The 125 went to Raytheon and the BAC 1-11 went to Romania.

[Hooligan2]

Yes, the Avro RJ name infuriated me. The 146 was and always had been a DH design and had absolutely no connection to Avro.

Yet rather bizarrely the BAe ATP which was based on the Avro 748 continued to be produced for a few years as a BAe product when the 146 was rebadged as an Avro. And in fact could have eventually become known as the Jetstream 61 which was a Scottish Aviation name...

Mind you, I squirm when I see references to the Boeing DC-6...

(I blame marketing people - of which I was one - who have no sense of history. My employer's lineage went back some 600 years and we produced a brief history of the various names of what eventually became our company, referring to some of the better known projects undertaken by our earlier colleagues, one of whom was a certain Sir Christopher Wren!)

[dhfan]

Yet rather bizarrely the BAe ATP which was based on the Avro 748 continued to be produced for a few years as a BAe product when the 146 was rebadged as an Avro. And in fact could have eventually become known as the Jetstream 61 which was a Scottish Aviation name...

The HP.137 Jetstream was originally a Handley-Page design but since Sir Frederick refused to toe the amalgamation line, whichever government department was responsible deliberately sent the company broke by refusing to award them any contracts.

The Handley-Page Victor conversion from bomber to tanker was awarded to Avro and Scottish Aviation rescued the Jetstream after HP went into liquidation.

Retro-renaming drives me mad too. At I think an RAF Finningley airshow I once saw a DH.104 Dove with a placard describing it as a British Aerospace Dove.

If I ever see a BAe Tiger Moth I shall look for somebody to strangle.

[Hooligan2]

Ooops, yes, temporarily forgot the HP origins of the Jetscream!

[JohnB]

About the HP era Jetstream...
They marketed it in the US as an executive aircraft and a third level airliner.
As you said, HP was forced into bankruptcy when it sent against the UK government's forced merger plans.
(Looking at what what the forced mergers did to the UK's aviation and car industries, will make anyone leery of government control/nationalization/socialism).

The USAF ordered Jetstreams as C-10s (supposedly medevac aircraft to make use of their large cabin) as part of the offset agreement for the UK purchase of F-111s (ordered as a replacement for the cancelled TSR-2).
Once the F-111s were cancelled, (the RAF had to make do with hand me down Royal Navy Buccaneers and F-4s with UK engines which, it has been said by UK aviation journalist Bill Gunston, made them the slowest, yet most expensive Phantoms built) so were the C-10s.
With HP gone, as has been said, they were shuffled off to Scottish Aviation.
The program found success once the pencil thin French.engines were replaced by Garrett 331s.
The new aircraft arrived just in time for the commuter airline boom of the '80s.

[dhfan]

(Looking at what what the forced mergers did to the UK's aviation and car industries, will make anyone leery of government control/nationalization/socialism).

From UK experience, nationalised industries are invariably run by incompetents with no business experience (or worse - accountants) and a bottomless pit of money as they're government backed.

The Spey-engined F-4 was due to offset again. There had to be a certain amount of UK input and the engines covered it. Point taken re slower and more expensive but I think I recall that the F-4K was better in one respect - range possibly?

The RAF fought for years against the Buccaneer but when they were finally forced on them they loved them.

I suppose I must have known about the Jetstream engines, they made the Viscount R-R Darts look like a radial, but it's not an aeroplane I've ever taken a great deal of notice of.

[Hooligan2]

F-4s with UK engines which, it has been said by UK aviation journalist Bill Gunston, made them the slowest, yet most expensive Phantoms built

"What happens when you spay a cat? It gets fat in the ass and slows down... what happens when you Spey a Phantom? It gets fat in the ass etc..."
(With thanks to Rod Dean)

[Noha307]

You're still using the terms interchangeably.
If it's official, it's a name, not a nickname. If it's a nickname, it's unofficial.

Yeah, I was called out on that elsewhere. Ironically, if anything, the three examples I laid out proves I need to change the way I think about it. Thanks for the push in the right direction.

The problem, however, is that its very easy to mentally interchange the two words (at least for me) because they both begin with the letter "n" and one includes the other within it. I'm realizing that it's part of the reason I have used the terms "official" and "unofficial". However, replacing "official nickname" with "official name" still leaves the redundant "unofficial nickname". You could go with "official name" and "nickname", but including "unofficial" emphasizes the key difference between the two - that one has government approval and the other does not. When it comes to public understanding of the terms over, say "Iroquois" versus "Huey", this is the biggest source of confusion. It doesn't help that, based on my previous post, the U.S. military's most frequent term for the third part of an aircraft's "title" is "popular name", as "popular" implies most widely used and as JohnB pointed out in his post, "Huey" is far more well known than "Iroquois". (There was an excellent article on the subject titled "Of Hosenoses, Stoofs, and Lefthanded Spads" in the July 1968 issue of USNI Proceedings.)

Is there a difference between US and UK terminology here?

I think you're right that this is sort of an American vs. British issue, just in a bit of a different way. The British (or Australian) tendency for nicknames often seems to be to just shorten the name/make it a diminutive (e.g. Mosquito > Mossie, Spitfire > Spitty, Typhoon > Tiffy), whereas the American aircraft generally have entirely different names and nicknames. If your nickname is just a shortened version of the name, then distinguishing between "name" and "nickname" would seem to be a bit less of a priority. Furthermore, when the name is the designation/model you, in essence, only have a two part "title". That being said, your comment that:

To use a couple of British aircraft as examples, the Fairey Swordfish is nicknamed the Stringbag. The Vickers-Armstrong Wellington is nicknamed the Wimpey.

does point out that this is not always the case. However, the reverse is not true: there aren't really many, if any, examples of shortened American aircraft "official" names being used as nicknames. While the need to shorten long monikers remains, the result are "unofficial" nicknames that bear no resemblance to the "official" name. (e.g. Fighting Falcon > Viper, Stratofortress > BUFF)

Only convoluted because of the forced amalgamation of, admittedly too many, UK aircraft companies.

Ah, so it was a legacy of all of the mergers. I didn't realize that. For reference, a timeline of British aerospace companies since 1955 is below:

(Source: Imgur via Wikipedia)

I didn't create this one, but it was the inspiration for the other aircraft manufacturer timelines in another thread.

The impression I always had with the early postwar helicopters names was that there was a significant divide between the Army and the Navy. All of the names you see quoted for the helicopters only really applied to the Army and the Navy generally just didn't use them.

After writing my previous post, I ran into Chapter 1 (originally Appendix 5 in the 1995 edition) of Volume II the the book United States Naval Aviation 1910-2010. It more or less confirms the non-use of Army names, stating in the designation table that the HTL "did not use Sioux" and HUK "did not use Huskie". Also, the HSS is stated to be the "Sea Bat" (two words) and the HUS the "Seahorse". However, the column that the names are listed in is titled "Popular or Common Name, other Designation and Miscellaneous Data". To me, the term "Common Name" could imply an unofficial nickname. Indeed, the HRP is listed as "Rescuer (Flying Banana)" - the latter of which is not an official name.

As always, I appreciate the input and please call me out on mistakes (especially any misunderstandings of British Commonwealth conventions).

[dhfan]

The Bell UH-1 is the perfect example of what I've been trying to stress.

It's name is Iroquois, it's nickname is Huey.
No need for discussion, they are facts.

(I had to look it up, US alphanumeric designations baffle me. I see posts on WIX about various aircraft and, with a few well-known exceptions, haven't got a clue what they're on about.)

Technically, I suppose a shortened version of a name: i.e. Lanc, Mossie etc. could be a nickname but it's not what I consider one. It's just an affectionate abbreviation.

As an example, using people rather than aeroplanes, in Britain especially in the armed forces, anybody whose surname is Miller is known as Dusty.
It doesn't matter if their actual name is George, Bill, Fred, Peregrine if you like, that's their nickname.

[Noha307]

(I had to look it up, US alphanumeric designations baffle me. I see posts on WIX about various aircraft and, with a few well-known exceptions, haven't got a clue what they're on about.)

See, that's the great irony, because its the other way around for me. (What's a Sea Fury Mk. XVIIVIXIVc? Or a Supermarine Stranraer - how do you event say that? Stran-ray-er?) I guess it's just what you grew up with!

In all seriousness, that's the advantage of the n̶i̶c̶k̶n̶a̶m̶e̶s names: they're easier to remember. (You see this reflected in the justification for the original announcement for American aircraft names mentioned in a previous post.) The flipside is that their length makes them clunky when it comes to usage. It's easier to write "P-51" in a technical report than "Spitfire". The other benefit is that you immediately know what the role of the airplane is just by looking at the designation. You know a B-17 is a bomber because it begins with "B", while its not at all clear what a "Lancaster" is from first glance. (I presume this is the reason that the RAF started adding letters to mark numbers postwar.) In theory, the way around this is to name all aircraft of a certain type in a certain scheme (e.g. all trainers being named after educational institutions), but this still requires that

Then you have the German and Russian schemes that abbreviate the manufacturer, which is less than ideal. In a practical sense, it's really not that useful for a designation to tell you which company built an aircraft - at least at the most basic level. If you really need to know - say for maintenance - then things like like the manufacturer code exist in the expanded designation. (e.g. P-47D-25-RE)

However, the worst has to be the World War II Japanese Army sequence. Everything is "Ki-".

The one other purported major downside of the American style system is that, because it is so systematic, in theory, it allows an enemy to extrapolate confidential information. For example, if you know there is an F-14 and an F-16, then there is likely an F-15. Alternatively, an F-22 is very likely newer than an F-15 because the number is higher and therefore there is a good chance it is a more capable aircraft. This claim is a bit tenuous because its imperfect (e.g. missing numbers could be unbuilt aircraft, aircraft can be ordered out of sequence), but the existence of similar efforts - namely the German tank problem, give it credence. I came across this claim somewhere once, but unfortunately I can't remember exactly where. I want to say it was from Peter Bowers, but I'm not sure.

A few other designation related facts while I'm on the subject:

• It took me a long time to understand where the Model 75 designation for the PT-17 came from, but a while back I finally figured it out. The answer is that the designation should be thought of as "Model 7-5". In other words, the fifth variant of the Model 7. What finally made me realize it was looking at Stearman's aircraft as a whole:
  
  • Stearman C1
  • Stearman C2
  • Stearman C3
  • Stearman Model 4
  • Stearman Model 6
  • Stearman Model 70
  • Stearman Model 80
  • Stearman X-90
  • Stearman X-100
  • Stearman X-120
  While the Model 5 and 110 are missing (presumably they were "paper projects" that never made it off the drawing board), the sequence is clear. Furthermore, the Model 70, 71, 73, 75 and 76 are all variations on the same design. This revelation was useful for understanding the World War II-era French and Russian systems as they make the same sort of jumps that seemingly skip tens or event hundreds of model numbers. (e.g. M.B. 150 > M.B. 160 > M.B. 170 or I-15 > I-153)
• The Russians - specifically Sukhoi - actually have their own modern version of the Boeing 7X7 sequence. Again, looking at their aircraft as a whole, its clear they always have the designation of their top of the line fighter end in a "7": Su-27 > Su-37 > Su-47 > Su-57. This one has become important as of late as there have been claims that the Su-57 designation was selected because it indicated that it was better than the F-22 and F-35 combined. (i.e. 22+35=57)
• There have been a few cases where companies decide to plug an apparent hole in their designation sequence, when in reality that designation belonged to an aircraft that was either a prototype or is generally referred to as something else. The original Boeing 717 was the KC-135, but it was reused for the MD-95 following the Boeing-McDonnel Douglas merger.[1] Similarly, according to the company's own rules, the Cessna 162 should be a development of the Cessna 160. However, the latter was a one-off prototype from the 1960s and in no way related to the 2000s era design.
• The problem with ferreting out all of these conventions is that there are always exceptions that break the rule and they can be pointed to as counterexamples. The difficulty is then separating the wheat from the chaff. For example, Cessna has one of the most convoluted designation sequences because it has changed so many times and the theories from each era counteract each other. The initial postwar system resembled the Stearman example, with the third digit indicating a variant. (The most well known example of this being that for some aircraft "0" indicated a tailwheel and "2" a tricycle configuration. e.g. Cessna 170 > Cessna 172, Cessna 180 > Cessna 182. Or, in a lesser known case, the Cessna 172 > Cessna 177, Cessna 182 > Cessna 187.) However, it was seemingly also decided that certain new family of aircraft (or outgrowth of an existing one) would start at the next "hundred" level. So you have even bigger jumps that the Stearman style system would justify, such as the first jet being the Cessna 500, even though the next lowest model number was, at the time, the Cessna 421.

[JohnB]

The UK attempted to name bombers after places/regions or the battles associated with those places: Vimy, Virginia, Blenheim, Whitley, Hampden, Halifax, Hendon, HeyfordManchester, Lancaster, Lincoln, Washington, Baltimore, Maryland, Valentia, Wellesley, Warwick
The trouble with that is seaplanes and cargo types were similarly, named after places: London, Perth, Rangoon, Belfast, Hastings, Penbroke, Andover, Dakota...
Then there were the exceptions... Mosquito, the V-(Victory? Vengence?) Jet bombers, and the adoption of American names: Fortress, Hercules, Phantom, Liberator...

And of course they couldn't pass up a catchy alliteration: Supermarine Spitfire Swift, Spiteful; Hawker Hurricane , Hunter, Bristol Bulldog, Beaufighter...the list is endless.

[dhfan]

And hoping to woo the Australians, Canberra.

Sea Fury MKXXX doesn't tell you the finer details but you know it's an aircraft.

When I see a reference to an F43X-2-G3 I don't know if it's a patent medication, a government form or an aeroplane.

[Hooligan2]

When I see a reference to an F43X-2-G3 I don't know if it's a patent medication, a government form or an aeroplane.

I believe one or two types did possess a laxative quality...