At some point during almost every aviator's career, his buddies substitute a callsign for his given name. Sometimes he or she will pick one up in the training command and it will stick with them for their entire career. Sometimes aviators collect several during their careers, trading them off as their reputation or demeanor changes.
The callsigns themselves are diverse. They range from obvious to obscure, from cute to obscene, from clever to silly. What they share is an appropriateness that is not always easy to explain. They fit and they stick, at least for a while. Once they've stuck, you hear them around the ready room, and you see them on flight-jacket nametags and on squadron coffee mugs. A true callsign is one that, when you hear the guy's real first name (such as "Tom" or "Bill"), it sounds odd.
Wives very rarely use callsigns to refer to their husbands. The prevailing spousal attitude is that callsigns are childish and represent a part of the husbands that they (the wives) would just as soon the husbands grow out of. A few poor souls never get callsigns at all. It generally means that the person in question is either colorless or unpopular, or that he takes himself much too seriously. One F-14 RIO recalls two guys who, although their squadron mates tried repeatedly to give them callsigns, never seemed to get one that could stick.
There are a few basic rules that the assignment of callsigns seems to follow. You should never make one up for yourself, lest you run the risk of making it seem like you are trying to act cool. And squadrons should never make crash-program decisions such as "OK, everyone needs a callsign, where's the roster?" and proceed to dole out spur-of-the-moment monikers. Although there are strong philosophic connections, it isn't quite like in the cruise-classic movie "Animal House", when the frat guys name the two new pledges "Pinto" and "Flounder."
Callsigns (and their close civilian relatives, nicknames) reach well back into the annals of aviation. Circa 1930, now-famous aviators already sported nicknames such as "Squash," "Country," and "Stiffy." When Eugene Ely made the first trap aboard USS Pennsylvania, the ship's skipper was Charles "Frog" Pond. Theodore Ellyson was called "Spuds," a callsign later given to aviators who either had or came close to ramp strikes (near the "spud locker" on ancient aircraft carriers). NAS Oceana is called Soucek field; Apollo Soucek's nickname was "Sockem."
The official "History of Airgroup 32" (compiled in 1944) includes a list of "famous nicknames": "Little Caesar" Outlaw (the skipper, who racked up six kills on the cruise); "Grey Fox" Preston; "Trigger" Merkel; "Hard Luck" Ladley; "Spanky" McNair; "Plug" Terrill; and "Sleepy" Slocomb. Two members picked up a pair of nicknames each: "Cotton" Steinreide (also "Hoog"), and "Duck Belly" Palmer (also "Silent Sam"). VT-32's nicknames included "Broadway" Jones, "Scoop Jr." Dooley (also "Shadow"), "Stud" Stirling, and "Big Stoop" Armstrong. The history also points out that "Clem" Street was "protestingly known as 'Huey' and characteristically called 'Ant eater' by his hecklers." The reference to hecklers makes the point that, as far back as World War II, nicknames weren't always complimentary, and sometimes had an element of teasing. The history also lists the names of the 10 officers killed during training and combat. The list includes the nicknames "Monk" and "Dagwood."
A history of VF-3 from 1943 to 1945 also includes plenty of World War II nicknames: "Pup" Jones, "Pee Wee" Spalding, "Bashful" Burton, "Jetter" Lindsey (who also collected the handles "Pack Rat" and "Small Stores"), "Swampy" Creel, "Maidenswoon" English, "Rider" Moore, "Ghoulish" Gourley, and "Pinocchio" Thienes. Two squadron members -- "Speedy" Bacchus and "Yellowhand" Tyler -- showed up late aboard USS Essex after the squadron's final fling in San Francisco, "with a pair of wild tales that might have appeared within the covers of True Confessions magazine," the history said.
Glancing back at aviation history, it seems as if almost everything associated with flying got a nickname. Certainly the aircraft did -- "Fury," "Hellcat," and so on. Aircraft carriers also got less-formal handles: USS Lexington was called the "Blue Ghost," and USS Intrepid, after being bombed and torpedoed, was sometimes referred to as the "Decrepit."
These days, if you read through the squadron PAO releases in the back of The Hook, you'll find plenty of callsigns that are easy to understand given the popular frames of reference for aviators: "Oprah" Winfrey and Phil "Fess" Parker (television), "Omar" Bradley and Wright "Wilbur" McLeod (aviation history), Bobbie "Janis" McGee and "Tina" Turner (rock music). Most callsigns derive from last names, although the list above includes an unusual first-name derivative. Perhaps the easiest genre of callsigns involves simple plays on the sound of names: "Snatch" Snachko, "Voodoo" Voors, "Boner" Bonarth, "Cracker" McCracken, "Stash" Fristachi. Others are based on puns or cliches: "Peachy" Keene, "Ice" Berg and "Rock" Pyle.
Not all callsigns are particularly complimentary: "Sewer", "Wimpy", "Bhagwan", "Noid", "Ratbreath" and "Puke" come to mind. An aviator usually picks up the latter callsign by blowing lunch in an aircraft or at a squadron party. Even though a callsign like these doesn't sound cool, an aviator gets subtle points for living with it and not bitching. Other callsigns are catchalls. Orientals get called "Fuji", guys with Polish names get called "Ski." A rare aviator gets christened with a custom-made, perfect callsign, such as Wilk O. West: "Wilco."
Many of the best callsigns come from specific habits or events in an aviator's life, so that to understand the origin of the name, you have to have known the aviator for a while. Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan is the classic example of this trend. Someone with the callsign "Boomer" is either a party hound or else broke some windows with a supersonic low-level fly-by. "Sheets" probably spends a lot of time in the rack. "Beads" is sweating the load all the time, worrying about stuff. Stay around for 40 years and chalk up 22,600 hours, as did Patrick Byrne, and folks will probably start calling you "Pappy," too.
Here's an off-the-cuff sampling from the former squadron buds of Lt. Ward Carroll, an F-14 RIO and former editor of Approach magazine: "Rex" (because he went on a crash diet and started looking anorexic); "Harpo" (he had a curly mop of hair); "Munster" (from his first name, Herman); "Tapeworm" (because he was skinny, and also made the mistake of telling everyone that he hated the callsign, which is a kiss of death if you really want to get rid of it).
Carroll himself, at 6'4", picked up the obvious callsign "Stork" early in his career, and later "Mooch" (because he persistently borrowed stamps, pens, paper clips, sodas, and dollars). LCdr. Dave Parsons, also a former editor of Approach, earned the callsign "Hey Joe" during one cruise. This slang term refers to the native vendors that appear on the piers and on street corners in foreign ports, selling souvenirs. Parsons garnered the nickname for his success in designing and selling t-shirts and posters.
Many callsigns are obscure to non-aviators, and require elaborate explanations. Cdr. John "Pogo" Reid's nickname is an example. To "pogo" during airborne radio communications means to switch to another channel, then quickly back to the original one. Early in his flying career, Reid mistook this instruction for someone else's callsign during an airborne radio transmission, answering, "Uh, roger, Pogo..." The nickname, he recalls, was immediate, as soon as the story made the rounds of the squadron after they landed. |
