When I left flight school the callsign I was given was "Boots," because I was the only member of my class who was never hit on inspection for unshiny boots. I was Boots for most of my career.
During my first trip to Afghanistan, I flew a load of wounded Marines to a hospital ship. One of those Marines' mothers got her whole town together and wrote my CAG bunches of letters saying I was their unit's guardian angel. They made a little white flag with angel wings and a halo and hung it on the back of my chair in our squadron's ready room, and my name changed to "Angel Boots". After that, whenever a pilot on my boat flew critically wounded grunts to saftey the flag would get moved to their chair and they would become "Angel Whatever":
"Angel Hal"
"Angel Oak"
"Angel Ranger"
"Angel Sooner"
"Angel Mach"
etc. etc.
After the flag was on my chair a while, the "Boots" fell out of use and "Angel" stuck. We still passed the flag around, and they were still doing it when I left. When I got moved to a different boat for OIF-1 I went back to using just Boots.
Hunter is my middle name. I thought it sounded kind of badass. It didn't all fit in the game.
