How did WWII airplanes get their names?

* name of the type of airplane, i.e. Mustang, Lightning, etc.


* name of the airplane given by the pilot - i.e. "Marge", "Pudgy"
How did WWII airplanes get their names?
Often a pilot would paint his wife or girlfriend's name on his plane.
How did WWII airplanes get their names?
The name was selected by the manufacturer as part of marketing.





The nickname was usually selected by the pilot, maybe with input from crew members. It was typical to select mom, wife, or girlfriend.
Reply:For the spitfire, it is the nickname of a little girl.





For the Enola Gay, the bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb, it was the mother of the pilot.
Reply:The manufacturer usually assigned these names. Except the Lightening was a name given by pilots in the U.K. Lightenings were sent there before the U.S. got in to the war. But Flying Fortress, Thunderbolt, Mosquito, AeroCobra, Black Widow, and all the rest were named at the factory.





"P" as in P-51 stood for Pursuit. (Now it's F for Fighter.) C was Cargo, R for Recon, B for Bomber, and T for Trainer. The Army used this I.D. system, but not the Navy.
Reply:With the Messerschmitt 109 series there is actually a bit of confusion about the naming. The design was originally submitted by the Bayerische Flugzeugwerke company and with the way that the military functions the design had the designation BF 109.





In '38 the company was renamed Messerschmitt AG when Willy Messerschmitt officially acquired the company. At that point the designation was supposed to be changed to ME 109. For all other Messerschmitt designs this was held to, but with the 109 the ME designation was used interchangably with the BF designation with the BF typically getting used more, with the exception of the allies who all called it the ME 109.

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