WW2 American Aircraft Numbering

[Graham Boak]

I suspect it was a lot less confusing back when it was all happening, especially to those who actually needed to know.  Remember just how many aircraft designs and projects there were in the 20s and thirties.  You can't give everything aggressive "killer" names because, there aren't enough such names to go around,  The UK used a system of naming aircraft by type: bombers were after cities and town, fighters after birds, Navy torpedo bombers after fish etc (yes, it did get more complicated than that over time) but then they were criticised for not having sufficiently aggressive "killer" names...  Seems to me it is bad enough with the duplication nowadays, thank goodness there was more choice back then.  As for the habit of calling something the (for example) Corsair II and Lightning II, which totally understates the appropriate suffix number - there really is nothing polite that can be said without exposing the ignorance of those concerned.

 

Mind you, I always thought Tomcat a particularly feeble follow-on to the earlier names, so the naming system has its drawbacks in other ways.

[FinnAndersen]

Is it just me, or is the number of replies to the original question an indication of the succes someone had of making a, on the surface, simple system into a complete nightmare of an unintuitive mess?  

 

Someone mentioned that Japan copied it with some small changes that made it much more easy to decipher, but then they probably did not have as many roles for their planes as the US apparently had.

 

/Finn 

[Graham Boak]

All simple systems come more involved as they evolve, but in some ways the Japanese system coped with more variations in individual role letters than the US did - the US being more in the habit of using several strung together.  Look at all the different kinds of floatplanes.  And the US system was complete in itself rather than having yet another running in parallel with it - the Type O Carrier-borne Fighter alongside the Type 0 Reconnaissance Floatplane and the Type 0 Fighter Floatplane  - better not mention that the Army had Type 100 Command Reconnaissance Aircraft.

[pigsty]

18 minutes ago, Graham Boak said:

in some ways the Japanese system coped with more variations in individual role letters than the US did

Or didn't cope ... I mean, what's the significant difference between the "G" role (multi-place land-based Navy bomber) and the "P" role (multi-place land-based Navy bomber)?  Or "E" and "F"?

 

Let's face it, most systems make sense at first but - largely like plans - they don't survive contact with their users.  How else do you explain the F-22 being chosen over the YF-23 and then followed by the F-35?  Or the US Army: found it a bit confusing that there was an M3 half-track, an M3 sub-machine gun, an M3 light tank and an M3 medium tank, so now we have M numbers well into four figures as every damned thing gets its own regardless.  And that's from an arm of service that was forced into the unified system for aircraft and so could have learned from a decent example of distinguishing different things from one another ...

[MDriskill]

1 hour ago, FinnAndersen said:

Someone mentioned that Japan copied it with some small changes that made it much more easy to decipher, but then they probably did not have as many roles for their planes as the US apparently had.

 

/Finn 

The Japanese Navy's short designation system went through 19 letters of the English alphabet for type designators, which is a lot! But each one was a single letter, which kept designations short. When they needed something new they assigned the next letter, instead of combining them like the USN (SB = scout bomber, PTB = patrol torpedo bomber, etc.).

Edited February 7, 2022 by MDriskill

[dnl42]

1 hour ago, Graham Boak said:

The UK used a system of naming aircraft by type: bombers were after cities and town, fighters after birds, Navy torpedo bombers after fish etc (yes, it did get more complicated than that over time) but then they were criticised for not having sufficiently aggressive "killer" names... 

The USN used such class names for cruisers, minesweepers, and submarines, respectively. 

 

FWIW, Wikipedia claims this on Tomcat

Quote

The name "Tomcat" was partially chosen to pay tribute to Admiral Thomas F. Connolly, as the nickname "Tom's Cat" had already been widely used within the program during development to reflect Connolly's involvement, and now the moniker was adapted into an official name in line with the Grumman tradition of giving its fighter aircraft feline names. Changing it to Tomcat associated the aircraft with the previous Wildcat, Hellcat, Tigercat, Bearcat, Panther, Cougar, and Tiger fighters. Other names considered were Alleycat (considered inappropriate due to sexual connotations) and Seacat.

The "partially chosen" makes it seem apocryphal. But hey, I read in on the Internet, so it has to be true. Right?

[Graham Boak]

1 hour ago, pigsty said:

Or didn't cope ... I mean, what's the significant difference between the "G" role (multi-place land-based Navy bomber) and the "P" role (multi-place land-based Navy bomber)?  Or "E" and "F"?

 

Given that the G character was used for what was the largest types in the inventory and continued that way with the G5N, G6N. G7K(?), whereas the P came in later for medium twins, I suspect something adrift in the translation of the Japanese term for those categories.  That the Frances was much the same size as the Nell is just the growth of aircraft size with technology - which basically means driven by increasing engine power making more possible.

[Giorgio N]

1 hour ago, pigsty said:

Or didn't cope ... I mean, what's the significant difference between the "G" role (multi-place land-based Navy bomber) and the "P" role (multi-place land-based Navy bomber)?  Or "E" and "F"?

 

Let's face it, most systems make sense at first but - largely like plans - they don't survive contact with their users.  How else do you explain the F-22 being chosen over the YF-23 and then followed by the F-35?  Or the US Army: found it a bit confusing that there was an M3 half-track, an M3 sub-machine gun, an M3 light tank and an M3 medium tank, so now we have M numbers well into four figures as every damned thing gets its own regardless.  And that's from an arm of service that was forced into the unified system for aircraft and so could have learned from a decent example of distinguishing different things from one another ...

 

 

The presence in the US Army of different M3s and so on is because the complete designation of their equipment is "type Mxxx", where type denotes whatever the thing is and the M is followed by a consecutive number. Hence the full designation would be "Tank, M3" and so on (earlier it was type Myyyy, with the numbers being the year of adoption)

That I agree is quite a confusing system, having separate designations for separate types of equipment would have probably been simpler.

As for the number of various designations in a series, land equipment often ends having many apparently similar items with different designations. Even in the British "L series" there's a large number of variants of the L7 GPMG with different designations... and the same system actually features the same number for different kind of equipment: the same L7 designation is used both for the machine gun and a tank main gun.

 

The F-35 is a different story, where really the designation system was bent for marketing reason. The F-35 should have been the F-24 or F-25 (hopefully the latter at least here in Italy, as F24 is the form used to pay taxes and and I can imagine the kind of jokes that would have resulted from such a choice)

Edited February 7, 2022 by Giorgio N

[MDriskill]

2 hours ago, pigsty said:

Or didn't cope ... I mean, what's the significant difference between the "G" role (multi-place land-based Navy bomber) and the "P" role (multi-place land-based Navy bomber)?  Or "E" and "F"?

Francillon's classic Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War notes the P1Y Frances was conceptually a fast, hard-hitting machine like the B-25, B-26, or the IJAAF's Ki-67 Peggy, optimized for low-level ops. The G3M Nell and G4M Betty were longer-ranged strategic bombers, functionally more equivalent to US or British 4-engine types, with the 4-engined G4N Rita under development at war's end.

 

E was "reconnaissance seaplane," long-ranged machines like the E13A Jake with 3-man crew, cameras, etc.  F was "observation seaplane," smaller short-range defensive/spotter aircraft like the F1M Pete.

Edited February 7, 2022 by MDriskill

[Space Ranger]

16 hours ago, Marvel Onkey said:

Seems to me that it would be a lot less confusing just to give all the aircraft different names...

They did.

[Space Ranger]

6 hours ago, Giorgio N said:

The F-35 is a different story, where really the designation system was bent for marketing reason.

The X-35 became the F-35 because someone (a high-ranking USAF officer) in the Pentagon didn't understand the official designation system, made the announcement at a press conference, and no one had the balls to point out the error or make the correction!

Edited February 8, 2022 by Space Ranger

[FinnAndersen]

54 minutes ago, Space Ranger said:

The X-35 became the F-35 because someone (a high-ranking USAF officer) in the Pentagon didn't understand the official designation system, made the announcement at a press conference, and no one had the balls to point out the error or make the correction!

ROTFLMAO

 

/Finn

[e8n2]

1 hour ago, Space Ranger said:

The X-35 became the F-35 because someone (a high-ranking USAF officer) in the Pentagon didn't understand the official designation system, made the announcement at a press conference, and no one had the balls to point out the error or make the correction!

No, it was marketing.  The Lockheed reps wanted to call it the F-35 to "avoid confusion" since it came from the X-35.  Some idiot in the Air Force went along with it, whether it was an officer or a DoD civilian executive, I don't know.  This is something that has really perturbed me for years and as far as I am concerned, both the Lockheed rep and the idiot in the AF who agreed to the stupid idea need to be charged with bribery, and Lockheed should have to foot the entire bill to reprint all of the manuals to have the correct F-24 designation on them.  The F-24 was the next available number and should have been used, but no, that made sense and was logical and couldn't be done.  Same thing with the KC-10.  McDonnell Douglas lobbied to have it designated as the KC-10 even though the C-10 designation (HP Jetstream), and several serial numbers to go with it had already been assigned, once again some idiot in the AF decided to go along with it even though the next available number at the time was the C-16, a designation that in the event has NEVER been used.  It should never have been allowed to happen in either case.  There is a designation system that needs to be used, and deviations should only be allowed for real national security concerns, e.g. the P-59B jet fighter was totally different than what the original P-59 designation had been used for but they did that to hide the fact that they were working on a jet fighter.

Later,

Dave

[Fukuryu]

20 hours ago, MDriskill said:

The Japanese Navy's short designation system went through 19 letters of the English alphabet for type designators, which is a lot! But each one was a single letter, which kept designations short. When they needed something new they assigned the next letter, instead of combining them like the USN (SB = scout bomber, PTB = patrol torpedo bomber, etc.).

 

In case of types that mixed existing categories, instead of creating complex prefixes the Japanese system appended the new designator as a suffix, for example, A6M2-N, N1K1-J, etc.

Edited February 8, 2022 by Fukuryu
Confused prefix and suffix... duh!

[dnl42]

As this thread has wandered into Japanese aircraft designations, I've long wondered something. The designations cited in this thread all used the Latin alphabet. I could understand if these were simply western translations or transliterations, but there are also contemporaneous photos of aircraft with Latin letters in their tail codes. To be sure, there are also photos of tail codes with Kana, which I would expect. I understand the use of western Arabic numerals dates back to 17th Century exploration.

 

Why were Latin letters used in tail codes?

Why were Latin letters used in aircraft designations (assuming these are not translations or transliterations)?

[ltdann]

On 2/3/2022 at 9:53 PM, dnl42 said:

What he said! 

 

And to make it clear, the "generation" or "sequence" number, 4 for the F4U and 6 for the F6F in the above, was specific to the aircraft manufacturer. That is, Grumman's F6F and Vought's F4U were contemporaries. Grumman produced an F2F, F3F, F4F, XF5F, F6F, F7F, F8F, F9F Panther, F9F Cougar, XF10F, and F11F. The F11F was renamed the F-11 in 1962 when US aircraft designations were unified. 

Don't forget the FF, which was the initial fighter by Grumman...

[Geoffry M]

11 hours ago, Space Ranger said:

The X-35 became the F-35 because someone (a high-ranking USAF officer) in the Pentagon didn't understand the official designation system, made the announcement at a press conference, and no one had the balls to point out the error or make the correction!

Reminds me of the announcement by Pres Lyndon Johnson at the unveiling of the new "SR-71".  By rules it should have been the RS-71, but in his public announcement he called it the SR-71.  So not to embarrass the unaware president it became the SR-71.

 

Geoff M

[Space Ranger]

10 hours ago, e8n2 said:

Some idiot in the Air Force went along with it,

I think that’s the operative phrase in this case!

[pigsty]

20 hours ago, MDriskill said:

Francillon's classic Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War notes the P1Y Frances was conceptually a fast, hard-hitting machine like the B-25, B-26, or the IJAAF's Ki-67 Peggy, optimized for low-level ops. The G3M Nell and G4M Betty were longer-ranged strategic bombers, functionally more equivalent to US or British 4-engine types, with the 4-engined G4N Rita under development at war's end.

 

E was "reconnaissance seaplane," long-ranged machines like the E13A Jake with 3-man crew, cameras, etc.  F was "observation seaplane," smaller short-range defensive/spotter aircraft like the F1M Pete.

Ah, that explains it.  But blimey, those are pretty fine distinctions, aren't they?

[Graham Boak]

Fine distinctions are part of the trade: a Ju.88 is different from an He.177, with both the Manchester and Halifax starting from a medium bomber specification.

 

I'm not really sure how a fairly large long range fleet reconnaissance floatplane is only a "pretty fine" distance from a small short range beast.  The two clearly can't do the same jobs as well as each other, if at all.  Perhaps you aren't aware of how much the Japanese relied on long range floatplanes to carry out the reconnaissance role that other navies used carrier-based aircraft for.  Thus freeing Japanese carrier decks for more combat aircraft, at the expense of dedicated cruisers with catapults - see the two Tone class, and the converted Mogami, for examples.  The Japanese also used auxiliary floatplane carriers (converted cargo ships, see Kimikawa Maru) to provide local air support for amphibious operation.  Hence the Alfs/Jakes/Pauls/Norms on the cruisers, and the Petes/Daves on the auxiliaries.

[e8n2]

On 2/8/2022 at 10:57 AM, pigsty said:

Ah, that explains it.  But blimey, those are pretty fine distinctions, aren't they?

 

On 2/7/2022 at 2:51 PM, MDriskill said:

Francillon's classic Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War notes the P1Y Frances was conceptually a fast, hard-hitting machine like the B-25, B-26, or the IJAAF's Ki-67 Peggy, optimized for low-level ops. The G3M Nell and G4M Betty were longer-ranged strategic bombers, functionally more equivalent to US or British 4-engine types, with the 4-engined G4N Rita under development at war's end.

 

E was "reconnaissance seaplane," long-ranged machines like the E13A Jake with 3-man crew, cameras, etc.  F was "observation seaplane," smaller short-range defensive/spotter aircraft like the F1M Pete.

Hence the E8N2 Dave ;-)!

Later,

E8N2

[MDriskill]

On 2/8/2022 at 9:31 AM, dnl42 said:

As this thread has wandered into Japanese aircraft designations, I've long wondered something. The designations cited in this thread all used the Latin alphabet. I could understand if these were simply western translations or transliterations, but there are also contemporaneous photos of aircraft with Latin letters in their tail codes. To be sure, there are also photos of tail codes with Kana, which I would expect. I understand the use of western Arabic numerals dates back to 17th Century exploration.

 

Why were Latin letters used in tail codes?

Why were Latin letters used in aircraft designations (assuming these are not translations or transliterations)?

Great question! I don't know the answer, but speculate that wartime Japan had some familiarity with western culture - especially within the armed forces, where France and the UK had an active hand in developing aircraft for the Army and Navy respectively - and that the Latin alphabet simply lends itself rather well to sequential nomenclature. Latin letters in IJNAF tail codes were also sometimes (but not always) a sequencing device, to distinguish different units sharing a large air base for example.

 

The "short" designation system under discussion was just one of several used by the IJNAF, too. The J2M1 prototype was the "M-20 Navy Experimental 14-shi Interceptor Fighter," and J2M service versions the "Navy Interceptor Fighter Raiden." No wonder we went with "Jack," eh...?

Edited February 10, 2022 by MDriskill

[pigsty]

On 2/8/2022 at 8:48 PM, Graham Boak said:

Fine distinctions are part of the trade: a Ju.88 is different from an He.177, with both the Manchester and Halifax starting from a medium bomber specification.

 

I'm not really sure how a fairly large long range fleet reconnaissance floatplane is only a "pretty fine" distance from a small short range beast.  The two clearly can't do the same jobs as well as each other, if at all.

Well ... the German and British examples come from systems where they made no attempt to distinguish roles in the designation - apart from Manchester and Halifax both being the names of towns so they wouldn't have been applied to, say, carrier-borne fighters.  On the Japanese front, yes, I absolutely agree, those are different roles calling for different styles of aircraft.  It just seems strange to make the distinction in the designation when, for example, you could go all the way from the B-10 to the B-58 in a single series and it caused no problems of understanding.  But that's what the Japanese Navy wanted to do, so good luck to 'em; and I now understand the system a little better than I did, so ta.

[Graham Boak]

Or from the B-1 to the B-1?  or what about the B-26?  Then when it comes to the same type of airframe with different engines...  P-78? B-38?  have a try at the various C-xx designations given to the Douglas two-engined transports.  Every system, every nation, has its peculiarities.  Did Mig-9s have piston engines or jets?

 

If you want to look for funnies in the British system (allowing for its variations with time), Batle may be an abbey but not a sizeable town.

[Ed Russell]

On 2/8/2022 at 7:59 AM, dnl42 said:

Changing it to Tomcat associated the aircraft with the previous Wildcat, Hellcat, Tigercat, Bearcat, Panther, Cougar, and Tiger fighters. Other names considered were Alleycat (considered inappropriate due to sexual connotations) and Seacat.

The F7F was to be called the Tomcat but, depending on which reference you believe, it was rejected as "having sexual connotations" or "too silly" and it became the Tigercat.

This has drifted way off course but has turned into an interesting discussion.