I overheard because, well once again I was listening to someone yell into a cell phone, and anyway she said she was going to list a bunch of famous airplane names.
Then she got off the bus.
Anyway, I got to thinking, I can only think of two famous airplane names: “The Spirit of St Louis,” (Charles Lindberg) and “The Enola Gay.” (Atomic Bomb)
Can anyone else help me out here. Name me some famous airplane names and why?
Air Force One
Spruce Goose
Glamorous Glennis, the X-1 that Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier with.
The Wright Flyer
The Wright Flyer.
Clipper Maid of the Seas (lost in the bombing of Pan Am 103)
The Memphis Belle, a famous B-17. Sentimental Journey, for the same reasons.
Miss Veedol, the plane that made the first nonstop trans-Pacific flight.
The Phoenix from the movie of the same name.
Alexander Graham Bell’s Silver Dart
That was the nickname that various news reporters gave the plane. Hughes himself hated it and it was never used in any official way for the plane. The official name was Hercules.
Pappy Boyington’s “lulubelle”
Songbird. Sky King’s airplane. Sky King was the main character on a TV show of the same name that I watched on Saturday’s when I was kid in the late 50s. Omigod, how I loved Saturday TV.
Technically that’s not a name, though; it’s a radio callsign that would apply to any (USAF) airplane which the President of the United States is a passenger on.
Not as well known as Enola Gay, but Bockscar was the bomber that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki.
Bugger! See what I get for commuting today?
Ok…
Spirit of Columbus, a 1953 Cessna 180 in which Geraldine ‘Jerry’ Mock became the first woman to pilot an aircraft around the world in 1964.
The Swoose, a B-17D flown by Frank Kurtz. He named his daughter, actress Swoosie Kurtz, after the plane.
.
The Batplane?
There are a few racing airplanes that are well known, such as Dago Red and Strega.
Then there’s Fifi, the only flyable B-29 remaining. And Betty Skelton’s aerobatic plane Lil Stinker.
I can’t believe someone posted that one before I could. I’ve actually seen that plane; well, most of it, anyway.
The Ruptured Duck, one of the B-25s used in the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in 1942.
Space Ship One and Voyager, both designed and built by Burt Rutan.
I didn’t think SpaceShipOne counted, it’s a space ship. If it does, then the VSS Enterprise counts. That’s the first SpaceShipTwo.
If it doesn’t, Eve counts. That’s the first WhiteKnightTwo. Named after Branson’s mother.
Clipper Maid of the Seas, the Pan Am airplane that Qadaffi destroyed over Lockerbie, Scotland
