Heck, even “Pitt” itself has a lot of potential for abuse.
Churchill also wanted to name a ship “Oliver Cromwell”, but for some reason George V didn’t agree with naming one of His Majesty’s Ships after a regicide.
Churchill allegedly wanted to name a ship “Boaty McBoatface”, but was advised not to do so by Howard Hughes.
Surely anything can be made scatalogical. Not the best reason, even if they called it William Pitt The Elder or somesuch.
The UH-1 helicopter was officially called “Iroquois”. The troops in VietNam called it a “Huey”.
I was about to reply “See Post #72” but you already knew about that one, didn’t you? 
He did give the name to a pretty decent tank, though.
Surely there is no cooler name that the Japanese “Zero” fighter.
Its alphanumeric designation was simply A6M0, the 0 noting the last digit of its first year of release, and so Japanese crews quickly started calling it just the Zero.
Coincidentally, the American code nickname for the fighter was Zeke. Eventually, the Japanese nickname filtered over and they started calling it the Zero, too. I’m not sure how the nickname made its way into Allied usage, but it must have done so pretty early on; at least as early as 1943, official training documents and films were referring to it as the Zero, not the Zeke.
That brings up a memory of a comic book (I want to say Archie?) and a bad guy who was threatening the world with his huge Air Force. His name? The Google, because he was “one followed by a hundred Zeroes!”
Nitpick: The number is Googol. Google is the search engine.
Dangit. I even looked it up under “Google.” I guess I’m just too used to that word.
The F-117 Stealth Fighter earned the nickname the “wobbly goblin” which is two words.
It’s also not a “cool” name.
Apparently F-117 pilots say that while it does emphasize stealth to the point where its stability suffers quite a bit, especially at low speeds, it’s not quite as wobbly and unstable as its nickname suggests.
The UH-1 was originally the HU-1. HU = ‘Hugh’.
Actually, the Japanese had two names, the manufacturer’s designation A6M (the variant A6M2 was already in service in 1940), and Navy Type 0 Carrier Fighter. An noted below the Japanese normally referred to it as Rei-sen and Zero-sen.
The Allies codes for Japanese planes weren’t designated until September, 1942 by an American USAAF intelligence officer. While the code names for other airplanese were quickly adopted, the Zero was well known enough that it was continued to be called that as well.
Apparently this was introduced or at least encouraged by Churchill during WW2. I read an account from a WW2 tank officer to the affect of “I wished he’d spent more time making sure we had high explosive rounds and less time worrying about giving the tanks cool names”
I was stationed at Nellis while the F-117 was still utterly secret and I was still there when it went public. Lotta folks moved between the regular USAF and the super-secret USAF then and there. I personally had no involvement with the 117 other than ogling the prototype they installed on a post at Nellis’s back gate after the big reveal. But I worked closely with people that came to my unit from there or went from my unit to there.
“Wobblin goblin” was a popular press nickname. The guys that flew it didn’t use it. Because it didn’t.
Aside: I just went to Google maps to try to cite the 117 on a post near the back gate. Wow have they changed that place in the 36 years since I left there. They now have a whole garden of jets including a 117. Note also the Soviet / Russian equipment and the Warthog just across the street from the F-117. And even more Soviet equipment directly south of the south gate. USAF was always very proud of their Soviet equipment museum. They left it outside where the Soviets could see it as a giant F-U!!; the whole collection could certainly have been kept indoors. As much of it was and probably still is.
Considering how long the F-16 was the active combat fighter there, plus all the weapons school, OTD&E, Thunderbirds, etc, use of F-16s, I’m rather surprised they don’t have one of those in their collection of jets-on-posts. Color me slightly disappointed / disrespected.
Does “Zero” there mean the same thing it does in English? Is it a loanword commonly used in Japanese, or did they just name that one specific plane (partly) in English?
Well, at least it’s not as bad as Mike Sparks one-man crusade to name the M113 the “Gavin.” Including creating multiple accounts on Wikipedia to alter to article on the M113 with the claim that “Gavin” was the unofficial nickname of the M113. Because he wrote in an unhinged article that he wanted it named the “Gavin”.
At least it produced some good memes mocking him.
It’s a loanword commonly used in Japan. Coke Zero, for example, is called コカ・コーラゼロ (koka・koora zero). The “e” in zero is pronounced at with a short “e” pronunication, such as in elephant, and the “ro” is the difficult Japanese “r” sound with the tip of the tongue just touching the roof of the mouth and not curled.
It’s not only used for foreign words, but also native Japanese expressions as well. The are various expressions where 零 rei, is used and others where zero is used.
Prior to WWII, Japanese authorities tried to eliminate many loanwords, and invented a number of words used in baseball, for example, so that “pure” Japanese could be used and not “enemy words.”
I’ve gotten down a rabbit hole looking to see if indeed they used “zero sen” in addition to “rei sen” during the war, with various articles claiming both that they did or didn’t.
It is clear that after the war, Japanese started using “zero sen” much more frequently as a result of more contact with Americans.
Don’t feel bad. The Google founders actually misspelled “Googol”, which is how we ended up with the word “Google” to begin with. And they’re supposed to be smart.
The Air Force seems averse to nicknames that are too colloquial. Everything is always rather staid/plain-sounding. Fighting Falcon rather than Viper, Thunderbolt rather than Warthog, Eagle II rather than Super Eagle, etc.