What do you think about the practice of naming planes with II or such instead of coming up with something new? Don't great new designs deserve their own original nicknames instead of being tied to predecessors no matter how illustrious?
For example: Thunderbolt II, Corsair II, Lightning II, Globemaster III, and the many different Mirages (some of which were logical based on same design evolution, e.g., III and IV). Somebody is even thinking about naming the new USAF tanker (IF it ever gets finally chosen and produced) Expeditor II, which is ridiculous since the Beech Expeditor was a small utility transport by a different company.
Corsair is particularly odd since that commemorates pirates who were among the Navy's earliest foes and still are.
Multisyllable tongue twisters sometimes get dramatically shortened by aircrews, e.g., Thunderchief to Thud, Stratofortress to BUFF, Thunderbolt II to Hog. The Fighting Falcon got that way to avoid infringement on the Dassault Falcon.
Just as in personas used in Aces High and in radio chat, nothing like a punchy one- or two-syllable nickname. Do you have any great aircraft names that haven't been used yet to suggest to designers and operators? For example, is there a Viper out there? I thought some people called the F-16 the Viper but haven't seen any examples recently.
