The thread which I started earlier in the week, about the F-16 being called the “Viper” instead of the Falcon on ABC news.com actually made a difference!!
The author of the article, David Ruppe, caught wind of my thread, and made the changes. He sent me a couple emails thanking me, and pointing out the same stuff you other Pitters did about the Viper name. Sounds to me like everyone was right.
Makes you feel special huh?
Heres the link to the other thread if you havent seen it.
That’s not necessarily true. Some days, I take off for the day and sit at the end of Navy Pier and eat pot stickers and contemplate where this all has taken me…
Then it’s probably all for the best that nobody called Mr Ruppe a goat felcher. So, has he joined up? Someone like him who can properly debate whether he made a mistake is prime SDMB material.
Really, having worked in this business (newspapers) for a while, I’ll tell you that most reporters and editors want to know when there has been an error and will gladly and with due gratitude make corrections about errors in fact.
We are only as accurate as the information given to us, and because of the opportunities for misunderstanding, miscommunication and just sheer fuck-ups, errors do get into print and on air.
They aren’t made with any malice; they just get by us sometimes. Let us know the correct information, and we’ll let others know and get it right the next time.
Actually, I didn’t read the original thread, but I was surprised that only one poster noted the fact that Falcon is usually referred to as the Viper by its pilots, because it sounds cooler. Quote from *Air and Space Smithsonian * July 1994: “the ‘Vipers’ as the pilots call the F-16s, are individually housed…” (referring to Kunsan Air Base). Same magazine, August/September 1992: “The General Dynamics F-16, whose pilots had wanted it named Viper *after the fighters in the TV series “Battlestar Galactica,” *was named the Fighting Falcon.”(“The Name Game”).
Not that this invalidates some of the complaints made, but I tend to agree with the pilots on this one. Why in the world should warplanes’ names be politically correct and morally uplifting, anyway?
