Reply to thread

"Bone" (B-1) and "Viper" (F-16) are strictly nicknames given by the crews and have never been official at any given time...

Going through the early 1950s Aircraft Recognition Manuals published by the US Department of Defense (comiled from the Army's FM 30-30, Air Force's AFM 50-40, and Navy's OPNAV 32P-1200 documents) I picked up a few very interesting elements:

• The B-17 was always called the Fortress, plain and simple. Yet most often, people use "Flying Fortress", which never was official.
     
• The B-50 and RB-50 were not officially designated the Superfortress, contrary to the B-29, but the Superbomber.
     
• The XF-91 was quite officially designated the Thunderceptor, which contradicts the notion that this may have been just an inhouse name.
     
• The name Starfire, introduced on the F-94C, seems to have been used for all versions of the F-94 retroactively.
     
• The "XF-102" (in fact YF-102) was not called the Delta Dagger, but the Machete.
     
• The RB-45 had a very unusual but interesting official name: it was called the Flying Cartographer!
     
• Not all transport Beechcraft 18s were called Expediters. The C-45A was called the Voyager, as was the Navy's JRB.
     
• The C-47F and R4D-8 were initially called Super DC-3 like the civilian version, the acquired the name Super Skytrain.
     
• Contrary to what has often been written, the C-119 was officially called the Packet, like the C-82, and NOT the Flying Boxcar.
     
• The L-23 was first designated the Twin-Bonanza, its civilian monicker, before acquiring the name Seminole.
     
• The Kaman YH-22 and HTK actually had an official name: they were called the Explorer.
     
• The Navy's PO-1W was called, more or less officially, the Flying Laboratory.