@Flying Pancake
LOL
Anab is a city in the Bible.
Kegler is twelve straight strikes in bowling.
Kilter means out of balance, though we usually say “off-kilter.”
Goa I’m assuming is the city in India where trance music came from.
Ganef is a dishonest person, though it sounds like a video game villain.
Grison is a South American species of wolverine.
Some poor Lieutenant probably had to slog through the dictionary to find the most obscure words possible.
@Flying Pancake
The weird ones for me were the missile names: Anab, Kegler, Kilter, Goa, Ganef, Grison. Some of those I had to drag out the big Oxford English Dictionary to figure out.
@kircher
True, though at least “Frogfoot” has a clear meaning. (It does just mean “foot of a frog,” right?) I would have never guessed that “Fishbed” actually meant “sedimentary stratum rich in fish fossils.”
@kircher
I get the logic behind the codenames; “Fishbed” just stood out to me because, until looking it up just now, I had thought that it wasn’t even a real word, unlike the other obscure/unlikely to be said over the radio names.
@Flying Pancake
The NATO Air Standardization Coordinating Committee picked names that were deliberately obscure in order they could be heard clearly in radio chatter.
@Reveal19
I know it’s not its “real” name, but someone at NATO still had to look at it and decide to call it “Fishbed.” Not a cool fighter jet name like “Flanker,” “Foxbat,” or “Fencer,” not a less-cool but still not made up name like “Fitter” or “Farmer,” but a completely nonsensical name.
(I actually do like the name “Fishbed”, but it still sounds funny to me.)
@Flying Pancake
It was given by NATO, not by its constructors. Anyway, not many russian planes have official nicknames, some are colloqual or unofficial.
LOL
Anab is a city in the Bible.
Kegler is twelve straight strikes in bowling.
Kilter means out of balance, though we usually say “off-kilter.”
Goa I’m assuming is the city in India where trance music came from.
Ganef is a dishonest person, though it sounds like a video game villain.
Grison is a South American species of wolverine.
Some poor Lieutenant probably had to slog through the dictionary to find the most obscure words possible.
Yep, those are some weird ones. I think I might know what “kilter” means, but the rest just sound like Lord of the Rings characters to me.
The weird ones for me were the missile names: Anab, Kegler, Kilter, Goa, Ganef, Grison. Some of those I had to drag out the big Oxford English Dictionary to figure out.
True, though at least “Frogfoot” has a clear meaning. (It does just mean “foot of a frog,” right?) I would have never guessed that “Fishbed” actually meant “sedimentary stratum rich in fish fossils.”
I felt the same way I first heard it, though I don’t think “Frogfoot” is a common word, either.
I get the logic behind the codenames; “Fishbed” just stood out to me because, until looking it up just now, I had thought that it wasn’t even a real word, unlike the other obscure/unlikely to be said over the radio names.
The NATO Air Standardization Coordinating Committee picked names that were deliberately obscure in order they could be heard clearly in radio chatter.
I know it’s not its “real” name, but someone at NATO still had to look at it and decide to call it “Fishbed.” Not a cool fighter jet name like “Flanker,” “Foxbat,” or “Fencer,” not a less-cool but still not made up name like “Fitter” or “Farmer,” but a completely nonsensical name.
(I actually do like the name “Fishbed”, but it still sounds funny to me.)
French indeed, lol
Would help if I read the description. Derp. Thought was French roundels.
It was given by NATO, not by its constructors. Anyway, not many russian planes have official nicknames, some are colloqual or unofficial.
MiG-21