The B-21 Raider and the list of submitted names

I like Explody McBombFace, but Money Pit is probably the most accurate.

 

They didn't include my suggestion of B-21 Cosby..... It's big, it's black and it will drop a load before you even know it's penetrated your airspace.

 

The name is one thing, but I despise the B-21 designation - it is improper and, in my opinion, illegal. (But then, the same is true of the F-35 designation.)

 

To my knowledge, skipping numbers for convenience or just on a whim is not permitted in the DoD procedure for assigning new aircraft numbers.

The B-21 should have been the B-3, just as the F-35 should have been the F-24 and the T-6 should have been the T-4.

 

McNamara is no longer around, so as long as a designation has not been used, it is pretty much up for grabs. The X designations are closely controlled, and our Military Spaceplane office filed for and received several in the late 90s (X-40, X-41, X-42). So for JSF, X-32 (Boeing) and X-35 (L-M) were assigned. After L-M won the competition, it caused less confusion to just go ahead and call it the F-35. B-21 was chosen by the flags for its 21st century reference.

Make sense? No, but as much as McNamara changing all the designations just to have something to do and cost the military money and time. The Navy's old system was pretty nifty, since the aircraft's designation also told you who the manufacturer was.

 

Agree, but at one time, anyway it seemed that they were all Grumman.

 

F4H? Plus dozens of others. In the 50s and 60s they punched out fighters like sausages.

 

I'm thinking older... Wildcat, Hellcat, Bearcat, Tigercat, Panther, Cougar, Avenger...
And Tracker, Intruder, Prowler, Tomcat, etc.

WWII and Korea.
And later.

Yes, I know that there were many other mfg's and they kept replacing planes as technology with engines, etc. progressed at a very, very fast pace.

 

F4U. SBD. F2G. Lots of different manufacturers. Handy to know who made them at a glance.

 

Agree.

 

What was interesting that the Japanese navy used a similar system for their aircraft in WW II, the only difference being that the number applied to the aircraft type rather than the manufacturer. Thus the A6M (Zero) was the sixth carrier-based fighter, which happened to be built by Mitsubishi. (If it had been built by Nakajima, it would have been the A6N.)

In the case of its adversary, the F6F (Hellcat), that was the sixth fighter built by Grumman.

The one other difference was that the U.S. system omitted the "1" where applicable, thus the Skyraider was the AD rather than the A1D. The Japanese did use the "1" where applicable (such as the N1K floatplane fighter).

 

Jim- Affirmative. Early in the war, we knew so little about Japanese aircraft that code names were assigned, much like we did with Russian aircraft during the cold war. So Zero, Nate, Betty, etc. One was even named Hap after Hap Arnold, but was changed quickly when the 5 star was not too happy about hearing about a bunch of Haps going down in flames.