That is to say, is a fighter pilot assigned a specific plane, that he or she always flies?
I know they love to put their names on them, but does that really mean anything? If you’re the hot shot pilot, and “your” plane is waiting on parts, the CO is going to stick you in another one, right? So there’s that.
But in normal times, do you have one and only plane that only you fly?
Because one time I read that no, that’s not true, but I don’t know any fighter pilots to confirm.
And was it different in WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, etc?
During WWII, my grandfather’s crew definitely had their own plane (a B52), named it, painted it, etc.
Once they had served their number of missions, I’m sure the plane was granted to a new crew, to rename and paint differently but, at least during their time of flying it, it was theirs.
If your grandfather fought in WWII, he wasn’t flying a B-52, as those didn’t join active service until 1952. It might have been a B-17, B-24, B-25, B-29, etc.
I had almost nothing to do with the Navy pilots, but the jets belong to squadrons that are not technically attached to the carrier and as I recall the pilots did indeed have their “own” jets.
In times of combat, if your plane is not operational and another pilot is not operational, you could absolutely be assigned to another plane.
The famous WWII ace Pappy Boyington wrote about how he would often take the crappiest plane out so clearly the personal plane stuff went out the window when they were just trying to keep planes and pilots in the air.
Previous thread. Short answer, is no, these days fighter pilots do not have their own jets, as in a jet that no one else flies. There are more pilots than planes, since planes can spend a lot more time in the air than pilots can. There may be a case where a pilot usually flies a particular plane (though others are flying it also), but if for some reason “his” plane isn’t available a particular day he’ll just fly another one.
You don’t even get to pick your own call sign. And it’s my understanding that nobody gets a cool-sounding call sign, and even if they do, there’s still an embarrassing story behind it. The point is not to build you up, it’s to knock you down.
Even in WWII, it wasn’t quite like each crew had their own plane… they did, but they were also interchangeable between crews, and crewmen often swapped between crews.
I mean, my grandfather’s crew (“Mudge’s crew” as described by his bomb group records) flew in “their” plane, but there are multiple missions where the whole crew flew missions together, but in other aircraft. And similarly, my grandfather flew most of his missions with his crew, but he also flew quite a few with other crews as well.
So overall of his 25 missions, 20 were with his crew, 12 were on “his plane”, and only 11 were both his crew and his plane. So 9/20 were on other planes, and 5 were with other crews entirely.
From WWII, based out of Italy. My uncle’s regular B-24 got too shot up and was not ready to fly again yet so the crew was assigned to the unit’s spare plane. My uncle, the flight engineer, went all thru it trying to find something wrong but couldn’t. So out they went.
The plane was called The Rubber Check (“It hasn’t bounced yet”). Guess what happened?
Ward “Mooch” Carroll has some great YouTube videos about this kind of thing.
He was an F-14 RIO and has an engaging style.
The above video may also deal with whether you have your own plane or not (not), I can’t remember.
They certainly get cool (to outsiders) callsigns, but as you say there’s generally a story behind it and they’re not choosing their own. It seems more akin to a nickname in that you may not initially like it, but you get stuck with it, and it becomes your identity. Think about it this way, “Maverick” is a cool callsign, but it’s not a particularly complimentary one.
In my civilian world people pickup nicknames that could easily have been fighter pilot callsigns. “Vapour”, “Fuelburn”, “Sleepy”, “Snoozer”, and so on. They all have a story behind them.
