we could be like the Canadians who rename everything just to confuse everyone

As I sad above, the Falcon is a british built glider of the '30s and the Falcon was the American version of the Dassault Mystere 20.

Tsk tsk Chevvron, you overlook the lovely and very British Miles Falcon of 1934 - surely an executive aircraft in its time! :)

There's not been a military Falcon before (although some Miles ones were impressed during WW2), mainly because for a lot of the 20th Century, bird of prey names were reserved for Rolls Royce engines.(there were exceptions to that) so Falcon CCmk 1 would have been quite in order. be interesting to see if once it gets fully militarised, it actually gets a role designator.

I'm excited that after 75 years we are abandoning Arabic numerals and role prefixes. We now have the Typhoon IV, the Hawk II, the Chinook VI and of course the XVII Globemaster and XXXV Lightning.

Indeed, took me a while to figure out what an Aurora was. Surprised they stuck with "Hornet" for the F/A-18.

Modern era Rolls Royce Jet engines were named after rivers, Conway, Tyne, Trent, Adour, Dart, Clyde, Avon, Derwent, Medway etc..
You have to go way back to their piston engines to really find the bird names.

So as you are referring to the 20th Century and as we have moved on from that, perhaps the Millenium Falcon would have been apt. :E

Don't forget we have had the Kestrel, Harrier, Merlin, Hawk etc as RAF aircraft, I do wonder if the reasoning is to avoid confusion in military circles with the F16 Falcon, even though it's supposed to be the Fighting Falcon... Or was.


..

They probably did not want to admit that they were operating them and hoped they would go away quietly. Even Charles had an unsuccessful go at getting rid of one for them, didn't he?

They even kept the number - CF-18. Similarly with the CF-104.

On the other hand, not many people would connect CC-138 with the Twin Otter!

It's a nice shiny new aircraft - perhaps call it "ENVY"?

Officially, the Hornet is the CF-188 (You can see what they did there - the Globemaster is CC177).

Was the Harrier GR5 really the same aircraft as the GR3? 🤷‍♂️

Don't forget we have had the Kestrel, Harrier, Merlin, Hawk etc

The MERLIN started out as the European Helicopter Industries 01 (EHI 01) which became the EH 101 somehow. The competition to name it for the RN came up with MARLIN. Pretty good seeing that it was to be an ASW helicopter. Somehow this morphed into MERLIN.

Lucky it wasn’t cincelled.

Mog

Seems appropriate

European New, Voters Oblivious Yet again......

Hat, Coat, Umbrella, Briefcase. Roller Bag, Emergency exit slide

I understand that EHI 01 and EH 101 was a typo that was never corrected. Probably the same with the Marlin ;)

I've still never understood why the F-35 was never given a proper UK designation - Lightning FGR.7 or FGR.8, depending on whether or not the English Electric F.7 was ever deemed to 'exist'.

Neither was the C-17.

I did read it was because both were tied into the US certification and engineering systems

Either that, or somebody thought that Lightning II Mk.1 (and ditto Globemaster III) would just be confusing. :O

Additionally, don't forget that RNAS Worthy Down was HMS KESTREL, RNAS Kete was HMS HARRIER and, perhaps a little more significantly than "Somehow" in the current context, RNAS Donibristle was HMS MERLIN, and of course RNAS Culdrose is HMS SEAHAWK rather than plain old HAWK. :D

Jack