hello

Ok, here's a little intro:

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, before, during and after the Korean war, the fleet of B-29 Superfortress bombers were being converted into jet-powered B-50s and KB-29 tankers. After the Korean war, though, when it was realized that large lumbering piston powered aircraft were now useless against jet fighters, some B-50s and most KB-29s were converted to KB-50 jet tankers.

Now here's the strange part: Modern tankers like the KC-135 or KC-10 have the designation "KC" standing for "Kerosene Carrier" or "Kerosene Cargo" or something similar. Now these bombers which were converted into tankers got the designation "KB" which probably stands for "Kerosene Bomber"!

There are some more weird US designations like the A-12 Oxcarts "A". With the A-4, A-5, A-6, A-7 and A-10, the "A" stands for "Attack" which is correct as they are all ground-attack aircraft. However the A-12 got it's "A" because the project name which spawned the A-12, YF-12 and SR(Strategic Reconaissance)-71 was called "Archangel". So the pattern goes "Attack-4 Skyhawk", "Attack-5 Vigilante", "Attack 6 Intruder", "Attack-7 Corsair", "Attack-10 Thunderbolt 2", "Archangel-12 Oxcart".

If anyone knows any more strange designations which make no sense, they can post it here.

I still don't know what "U" in U-2 stands for.

Maximus

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TopHatter

Yep, that one does seem pretty silly. "Tanker/Bomber" is probably closer to the real meaning.

To make matters worse, some politico (SecAirForce or LBJ, can't remember who screwed this one up) referred to it as an SR-71, when in fact the correct order is RS-71

IIRC it's "Utility", which was a cute way of hiding it's true role.

That's usually a host of different reasons, like bureaucratic bumbling.

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Anon

"Fighter"

The_Burning_Kid

Actually that's just a myth. What really happened was that one of the top guys wanted the name to be SR-71 (strategic reconnisance) instead of RS-71 so he changed the name in the script that LBJ read. Then early draft of the script didn't have that change so it gave the impression that he misread it.

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TopHatter

Ahhhh....very interesting
No clue that was the case, thanks Kid

And I did a little research, why didn't you say it was LeMay that wanted that? It would have gotten a huge knowing grin along with that "Ahhhh"

RustyBattleship

"F" stands for "Fighter" plane. In WW II it was "P" for "Pursuit" plane. It was shortly after the war when the fly force changed the P to an F. The Navy always used an "F".

TopHatter

I think Maximus might have been referring to the huge - and occasionally haphazard - range of numbers within the "F" designator.

Like why for instance did we go from F-18(Hornet) - skip 19 - F-20(Tigershark) skip F-21 Hit F-22/YF-23 ok, but then leap into the 30s.

The_Burning_Kid

Because I didn't remember and I was unable to fight my laziness to go and look up his name.

Damn laziness....

The_Burning_Kid

I think it has to do with either the designations not sounding good or being used commonly in fiction. Like F-21 doesn't sound great and F-24 and F-25 are frequently used in fiction.

Well that's my thinking...

Gun Grape

We didn't.

The F-19, most people agree is the F-117. Seems that the AF didn't want to have a "secret plane" that already had a plastic model and a computer game named after it. The 1/48 scale model put out by Testors/Italeri became the best selling model of the 80s and possibly the best selling model of all time. Even though it wasn't accurate at all.

The other theory being that it is the designation for the "aurora"

The F-21 were Kfir's leased by the USN and USMC for their aggressor squadrons between 1985-1989.

The F-24 was the original designation for the Superbug. Until they decided that the upgrade had to be a mod vice a new plane

Some of the others were used for US desgnations of foreign planes for evaluation and the X planes. Like the X-29 forward swept demonstrator and the X-31 Enhanced Maneuverability Demonstrator (Vector)

Every once in a while we seem to "Skip a few" to get back on track.

TopHatter

Wow....
I kinda figured about the X-29 and so forth but wasn't sure.

How about the F-111 though?

Gun Grape

Its the nature of the beast. The letter to the left of the tack mark stands for the basic mission of the aircraft . The basic A-6 intruder is an Attack plane. The letter before the designator denotes a modified mission. So the EA-6 is an electronic warfare plane and the KA-6 is a tanker. Both using the basic A-6 frame.

The only standard deviation of this is Helos and VTOL planes. For helos the letter to the left of the tack mark is an H denoting helo and the letter before it designates the role ie AH-1 is an Attack helo and a UH-60 is a utility helo.

And Harriers are AV-8s Attack Vtol planes. You are confusing two different time periods. The A-12 of which you speak was a 1950s project. The military didn't consolidate the designations of airplanes until the early 60s.

The A-12 of modern times was the Navy ATA stealth attack plane the "Avenger 2" which was axed.

The plane was a CIA sponsored program at first. Needed to hide it somehow. Thats why we have $500.00 toilet seats

Gun Grape

Its a pre DOD consolidation number. Prototype designated in 1962 prior to the DoD mesh of designators.

Now a correction,. After further research I have found that the reason that F-19 wasn't used was because Northrop requested that it be skipped and F-20 be assigned to the Tigershark. They were afraid that F-19 would be associated with Mig-19 and they wanted to promote the F-20 as a new generation of fighter.

My bad

hello

F-21A is the Israeli Kfir used in Aggressor training along with the "F-16N".

After the century series ended in 1962, it began with F-1 Fury, F-2 Banshee, F-3 Demon, not so well-known planes, followed by the F-4 Phantom and F-5 Tiger, and then some more less-known planes, the F-6 and F-7, followed by the F-8 Crusader, F-9 Panther, F-10 Skyknight and F-11 "Tiger" although it had nothing to do with the F-5. Then the YF-12 which was an armed version of the SR-71, F-13 was skipped due to 13's unluckiness, F-14, F-15, F-16, YF-17 Cobra, F/A-18, F-19 skipped, F-20 Tigershark, F-21 Kfir, F-22 Raptor and YF-23 Black Widow. F-24 was supposed to be used for the F/A-18E/F initially, but it wasn't used as that would mean having to start a new project and requesting funding for something totally new, which is the same reason the Backfire also got the Blinder's "TU-22" designation. F-25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 and 31 were strangely skipped until the X-32, and then 33 and 34 were again skipped to reach the F-35 JSF.

F-1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10 and 11 were actually all Navy planes of pre-1962 but they kept the designations and no other planes were named on them.