# AF pilot callsigns

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/af-pilot-callsigns/169925>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 20, 2003, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/af-pilot-callsigns/169925 "2003-04-20T21:58:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Kjetil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc8723/32.png) [@Kjetil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kjetil)\
**Post date:** [April 20, 2003, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/af-pilot-callsigns/169925/1 "2003-04-20T21:58:17Z")

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From [here](http://www.danford.net/spad3.htm), under “_Subject: Re: call sign_” (an interesting article [here](http://www.danford.net/toss.htm) based on these emails, about nuke-lobbing from propeller planes in the early Cold War):

> [@](#):
>
> **To the best of my knowledge, no one had individual call signs during my era. That came later…Probably after the movie “Top Gun”. Just guessing at that.**

So, when did they come along?

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**Author:** ![BF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b5ac83/32.png) [@BF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BF)\
**Post date:** [April 20, 2003, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/af-pilot-callsigns/169925/2 "2003-04-20T22:42:28Z")

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IIRC, they’ve been around since radio in the plane. My bud, who’s a Marine pilot, got his call sign in flight school. (He graduated around 1986, around the time when the movie came out).

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**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\
**Post date:** [April 20, 2003, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/af-pilot-callsigns/169925/3 "2003-04-20T23:37:56Z")

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It seems that nicknames were more prevalent decades ago. I can’t think of anyone I know with a nickname except for my mom’s husband Turk (short for “Turkka”). I remember watching a movie where a white-haired kid was called “Snow”, but that was a long time ago. _Leavit to Beaver_ had “Lumpy”, but that was in the 1960s (or 1950s?). But nowadays, at least here in Los Hideous, I never hear nicknames. (Wait – I do hear some among some ethnic groups; but no one I know.)

Back in the 1930s and 1940s you had pilots with names like “Smilin’ Jack” (a comic strip) and James B. “Earthquake McGoon” McGovern. IIRC RAF Spitfire ace Douglas Bader used “Dogsbody” on the radio. And of course, there was Gregory “Pappy” Boyington.

My guess is that pilots used their everyday nicknames as their “handles” dating back to WWI. _Esprit de corps_ and all of that. I think that pilots “always” had nicknames. If the quote in the OP is correct, then I’d guess that sometime in the 1970s a pilot “had” to have a nickname to be part of the “club” and that _Top Gun_ just made the practice better known.