Warbird Information Exchange

Probably my greatest area of interest when it comes to aviation is designations and nicknames. One of the many specific aspects of that is the etymology those nicknames (which shouldn't be surprising given my previous threads on cliches, nomenclature differences, and the origin of Flying Fortress). To take it one step further, I have been making a list of aircraft where the origin of their nickname can be tied to a specific person. So far, I have come up with the following:

• Beechcraft Super King Air 200 - Olive Ann Beech[1]
• Bell 206 JetRanger - Edwin J. Ducayet[2]
• Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress - Richard L. Williams[3]
• Convair B-36 "Peacemaker" - E.M Wilson[4]
• Cessna O-1 Bird Dog - Jack E. Swayze[5]
• de Havilland Australia DHA-3 Drover - Thomas King[6]
• Ellison-Mahon Gweduck - Nancy Ellison[7]
• Embraer EMB-312 Tucano - Carlos Fernando de Souza Panissa[8]
• General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon - TSgt. Joseph A. Kurdell[9]
• Handley Page Victor - Winston Churchill[10]
• Lockheed Electra - Robert Gross[11]
• Lockheed Little Dipper - Robert Gross[12]
• Lockheed R6O Constitution - Robert Gross[13]
• North American A-36 "Invader" - Lt. Robert B. Walsh[14]
• Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider - Lt. Col. Jaime I. Hernandez & Tech. Sgt. Derek D. White[15]
• Piper Cub - Gilbert Hadrel (Devon Earl Francis, Mr. Piper and His Cubs, First (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1973), 24.)
• Swallow - Emil Matthew Laird (Edward H. Phillips, Travel Air: Wings Over the Prairie, First (Eagan, Minn: Flying Books, 1982), 3.)
• Republic P-47 Thunderbolt - C.Hart Miler (Roger Freeman, Thunderbolt: A Documentary History of the Republic P-47, First American (New York: Scribner, 1979), 20.)

There are also a few other examples that - while not for a specific aircraft - are still worth mentioning:

• Allied reporting names for Japanese airplanes - Frank T. McCoy[16]
• Tu-160 individual airframes - Lt. Gen. Anatoly Zhikharev[17]
• NATO reporting names for Soviet fighters - Lt. Col. James W. Doyle[18]
• “Grasshopper” liaison airplanes - Maj. Gen. Innis P. Swift[19]

Can anyone point me to any more examples? (If you could provide a reference too, I would greatly appreciate it.)

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Tri-State Warbird Museum Collections Manager & Museum Attendant

Warbird Philosophy Webmaster

F-16 is not officially called the Fighting Falcon - the F-16 was originally called the Viper after the fighters in Battlestar Galactica which was a popular TV series when the F-16 went into production

As per the reference above, The F-16 is officially called the Fighting Falcon. Everyone unofficially uses Viper (IMHO, because it is not a mouthful), but Fighting Falcon is the official name. There's a good article from 1968 called Of Hosenoses, Stoofs, and Lefthanded Spads that explains the whole official/unofficial situation.

_________________
Tri-State Warbird Museum Collections Manager & Museum Attendant

Warbird Philosophy Webmaster

A-36:
Apache (North American Aviation Marketing)
Invader (the fighter-bomber groups flying it)
Mustang (British officialdom for the entire family/official USAAF)