Not to mention that Nimrod (pronounced “Neem-RODE”) is a fairly common Israeli boy’s name. I’ve known more than a few.
The U.S. had the Enola Gay, yet somehow nobody was laughing about that one.
I totally get the joke, but the USAAF didn’t name it that, the pilot did, after his mother. I actually wonder what she thought about it.
Well, at least one person must have thought it was funny…
In a way, she’s actually more famous for Hiroshima than her son.
To be fair, most of the names are funny only in retrospect. Not only do connotations change over the decades and centuries, but they are also being filtered across an ocean.
No, just [temporarily] purged 80 years later due to the Trump administration’s ham-handed (and reprehensible) anti-DEI efforts.
That was last year’s news, though. This year their anti-DEI efforts include attempting to rescind naming honors for a Black WWII hero (Dorie Miller). In favor of Trump, of course, which makes it all the more nauseating.
I’d rather serve on the HMS Pansy any day rather than the USS Donald J. Trump. 
There’s a set of Gay dealerships down here (Kia, Buick, etc). I’m sure they’ve heard all the jokes a thousand times by now
Have they restored the records of black Medal of Honor winners yet?
Actually, I believe they did. The outcry was strong enough that they backed off.
Thanks for posting that link. It triggered another thought. He looked so young in his picture. I forget just how young most of the men serving in WWII (well, and all wars) were, because in the movies they’re all played by much older actors. And I’ve seen a lot of WWII movies. We just re-watched Mister Roberts the other day, and while a lot of the crew were the appropriate ages, the main stars other than Jack Lemmon (and he was 30) were way too old for their roles.
As it was a supply ship, not as much as you think. The Captain & Doc weren’t that age inappropriate for a non-combat vessel. Doctors were not easy to come by and older volunteers in critical short areas like Doctors were excepted from normal age brackets.
Mister Roberts and Ensign Pulver were the only really egregious ones.
ETA: I just verified, Doctors were commissioned as old as 64 for Navy Medical Corps and I think the movie takes place in 1944? so Doc could have been 66.
I’m guessing experienced ship Captains were not being retired for age, but not as sure.
Regarding naming a ship after the Orange Asshole, I’d suggest renaming the USS Neversail (the nickname for the USS Recruit) in San Diego. It’s the non-floating boat model that boot camp sailors train on. It never goes anywhere and is of no use to anyone other than the latest boot camp company to pass through.
Thanks. Makes sense. And William Powell was only 62 when they made the movie, so he was well within guidelines.
I actually thought William Powell was older, was he really a drinker, like his most famous character? Nick Charles Probably just old people looked older in the 50s. He had a long life.
Cagney was 56 so not really a stretch it seems.
But Fonda being a 50 year old Lt Jg. is a stretch I feel.
I don’t think Powell was more of a drinker than most “drinkers” of that period. He was devastated by the death of Jean Harlow whom he was planning to marry. Apparently, she was the love of his life, and he suffered a mental/physical breakdown afterward. That can age a person.
According to Tibbets, she thought it was very nice. It wasn’t “his” plane though, while of course he was the commander of the 509th group, he didn’t really have an assigned airplane and his co-pilot was less than pleased to see the name painted on the aircraft.
In the novel, The Sand Pebbles, the eponymous Yangtze gunboat USS San Pablo patrols the same stretch of river as gunboat HMS Woodcock and the crews meet up often. They had come up with the derisive nickname, Timberdick and the Woodcock’s crew complained they had given it a lot of thought and the worst they had come up with was Simple Apple. In solidarity the Sand Pebbles vowed to treat it as a consummate insult worthy of a fight if uttered in their presence.
Pre-war and WWII editions of Jane’s Fighting Ships had translations of IJN ship names and naming conventions. It absolutely fascinated me as a teenager (yes, I was always like this) that warships would be named after poetic terms for weather and led me to want to understand the culture of its military better. I even took an intro to Japanese class at college - as an audit, I’m horrible at languages.
The British had several generations of Tribal-class destroyers which would probably be unacceptable now. Plus several generations of Hunt-class vessels named after packs of foxhounds, which wouldn’t fly either.