You military guys have it easy. The poor old civvie is stuck (for the time being) with Boeing DREAMLINER :yuk:

Some poor names on major projects today. Mind you, some get renamed in common use like, Fat-Albert and, what was the AW Argosy sometimes called.....?

OAP

Well the raf did operate the p38 only for a short time...google is your friend

The japanese have also had a number of lightning.... The world tranlates to shinden.... Their first jetfighter, a poor mans me262 was called shinden and kikka

Does someone get paid a Wg Cdr salary to sit in an office and think up these names? If so how do you get that crazy job?

My favourite for comedy value are the old rainbow codes, which look like a two random words plucked out a tombola.

- Violet Vision
- Green Porridge
- Orange Poodle
- Green Janet

List of Rainbow Codes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I've always thought Yellow Sun was a well suited name to a nuclear weapon.. "Have some yellow sun, cold hearted Ruskies!" :-) If we get our nuclear deterrent back I would like to suggest the name Sandy coloured Glass.

"The Germans, Italians, Spanish and French all operated the Me Bf 108 Taifun in the 1940s, so Typhoon 2 would have fitted nicely, though the role is slightly different. The RAF had a slack handful as well, apparently."

The RAF impressed three Bf 108s into service on the outbreak of war, naming them Aldon apparently after the local BFW-Messerschmitt rep, J. H. Aldington. One of them was the German embassy's aircraft, which had suffered nails being put through its tyres at Croydon only hours after Chamberlain's radio broadcast on 3 September. While it was being ferried to its RAF user it force-landed in a field, whereupon the crew were apprehended by the local bobby as spies. We also managed to pick up one or two second hand Taifuns over the next few years.

Regarding the F35 of various suffix letters. are they pre-supposing that there will only be a single Mark? Lightning II (or Lightning 2) MK2 looks a bit daft. Anyway, if it's primary function will be mud moving, shouldn't we name the British machines after some American town? The Lockheed Martin Quahog has a certain ring to it.

GBZ

Its called Lightning 2 because thats the amount we can only afford to buy. Two of them.

At the risk of upsetting the Naval chaps, 'Avenger' for a Observer trainer seems a tad overstated! Mind you, we now have three names for the different King Air derivatives in the UK service.

'Air Seeker' and 'Atlas' could both lend themselves to rather unfortunate phonetic sobriquiets.

And Voyager has rather grown on me....

And Voyager has rather grown on me....

A somewhat curious coincidence further to my post above, VOYAGER was the name of one of the three DARING Class destroyers built for the Royal Australian Navy.

Sadly, VOYAGER sank with the loss of 82 lives, following a collision with HMAS MELBOURNE during the night of 10 February 1964 off Jervis Bay NSW when she was passing ahead of the carrier, for which she was acting as plane guard.

Jack

Most impressed by your magnificent digressions, union jack. No wasnt trolling, just never bleedin eard of 'im...but thanks to your post, belatedly become an expert on the fine Adm Duncan I feel his exploits at the blockade of Texel topped the battle you mentioned. Having been deserted by most of his fleet due to mutiny he signalled his few ships to anchor such that even if all were sunk, the channel to the Dutch base would remain sealed...Still think its a rubbish name though!

Lightning Mate,

Just catching up on this thread (overseas commitments). Love the FMk2 piccie, but why the dead dolphin squadron?:{