Rubbish Names!
 

Rivet Joint! ...eh? From the nation which built the Devastator, Hellcat and Thunder Warrior. Why are we buying aircraft with such rubbish names?

Do you think Devastator, Hellcat or Thunder Warrior would be good names for a medium-level sigint aircraft based on a 50-year old airliner....? :E

How about the

Eneh Mk1. Named after Nimrods Spouse

Any add ons could go in the Eneh pod.. That should get things moving :p

from a "Carry On" film. "My name is Hengist Pod, and this is my wife Senna"

How about 'Rivet Joint: I Hope So'

Rivet Joint
 

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_RC-135 if you want to see some of the funky names the US has come up with variants of the KC135 over the years.

Sun.

Their Airships presumably also don't like the name Rivet Joint, so in RAF service it will be known as Airseeker. (an equally rubbish name IMHO).

I'm not fond of the designation Lightning 2 particularly - hence on this site at least Dave is popular. For an aircraft that hovers, sticking to a bird of prey is good but all the hovering ones (Kestrel, Harrier and Osprey) have already been used.

Matching decent names to aircraft does seem to be tricky, whilst I like the nod to FAA history the name Avenger for the King Airs at Culdrose is somewhat at odds with the role.

For RC-135 perhaps some sort of vulture would have been appropriate...

Chipmunk.

Mentioning that name must have stuck fear into the cold hearts of the Ruskies.

Well a Cessna F172P did so every reason for them to worry about the Chipmunk.

In the good old days, they would have come up with something much more appropriate. Consider for example the Beardmore Inflexible:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...le_Norwich.png

Wikipedia: Beardmore Inflexible - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That got me thinking, so I turned to Google, and it turns out that buzzards occasionally hover. I don't think there's been a military 'Buzzard', and it would have been quite an appropriate choice because only some varieties can hover, and even then they mostly use a bit of headwind to help:). Trouble is the Americans call buzzards 'hawks' so it would get quite confusing; in the States a 'buzzard' is a vulture....

but but..RJ himself thought SPITFIRE was a rubbish name......just saying!!

My bet's on the next BAES offering for a pretentious Air Force with no money....











The 211-Rubber-Band powered Fuzzy-Felt & Velcro Frightener!

Pop Rivet?

SGC

I was always puzzled by the Canadians' choice of the name Cormorant for their Merlin variant, given that the bird spends a lot of its time diving underwater - not a practice to be recommended in a helicopter :eek:

IMHO ... the name Reaper stinks :ugh:

Were chipmunks not used during the cold war, based in Berlin, where they conducted covert surveillance over the other side of the wall?

Martinsyde Buzzard, would have replaced the Camel/SE5A and others in 1919 had the war continued.

Camel now that name must have had the Germans laughing fit to bust, maybe that was when it sneaked in and shot them down thereby giving them the hump..

Then you had it's stable mate the Salamander a slippy creature for ground attack.

Cuckoo laying it's eggs in other peoples nests.
Sopwith seems to have had it's share of naff names.

The worst are when the designers haven't a clue and just add a two. i.e Thunderbolt 2.

Bingo ... the Chipmunk was also used in Cyprus on the Front Line. In fact WG846 of the BBMF served both in Crprus and Gatow :ok: