Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnews!military From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: F-19 vs. F-117 Message-ID: <1990Jul28.161033.1825@cbnews.att.com> Date: 28 Jul 90 16:10:33 GMT References: <1990Jul18.040928.14461@cbnews.att.com> Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 59 Approved: military@att.att.com From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) >From: Adrian Hurt >Also, can someone explain to me the way the USAF numbers its aircraft? I >can account for most of the numbers 1 to 20, thus: > 1: McDonnell FH-1 Phantom > 2: McDonnell F2H Banshee > 3: McDonnell F3H Demon > 4: Confusion :-) North American FJ-4 Fury; Douglas F4D Skyray; McDonnell- > Douglas F4H Phantom II. > ... You're confusing two different numbering systems. *All* the numbers you give above are the old US *Navy* designations, which are quite unrelated to the USAF scheme that was standardized across all the US services in the 1960s. The USN scheme used an initial letter for type of aircraft, using codes similar to the USAF ones but not (I think) always identical, a second letter which designated manufacturer (e.g. H for McDonnell and D for Douglas, before they merged into one company), and a number to distinguish successive aircraft of the same type from the same maker. So, for example, the F4H was the fourth fighter from McDonnell Aircraft. There were no hyphens in Navy numbers. The USAF scheme is basically type code, hyphen, number, so F-20 is nominally the 20th fighter design. Numbers are often assigned to things that never make it to production, e.g. the F-20 :-(, so the number space seems to have gaps. When the USAF scheme was standardized across all the services, there came the problem of renumbering all the Navy aircraft. There was also a minor nuisance in that the numbers were getting large for some types, e.g. the F-111. All the numbers were nominally restarted at 1, and Navy aircraft were renumbered in such a way as to preserve as much similarity to the original numbers as possible. So the Phantom II, F4H to the Navy and about to enter USAF service as the F-110, became the F-4 for everybody. I believe the Phantom, Banshee, and Demon became F-1 through F-3. The Fury was out of service by then (I think), so it was not renumbered. The Skyray became the F-6, I think. Assorted other long-forgotten types got most of the seemingly-missing numbers, although I don't think there was an F-13. >21: ? >22: The hypothetical ATF. F-21 was the designation for IAI Kfirs temporarily in US service. The two ATF prototypes are the YF-22 and YF-23. To tidy up loose ends :-), the basic USAF designations often get prefix letters to indicate different roles and suffix letters to distinguish different variants, so an RF-4D is the D variant of the F-4 converted to a reconnaissance aircraft. Don't try to fit the SR-71 into the scheme in any rational way, as it simply does not fit; that designation came about for historical and political reasons. That's also true of some other recent aircraft, like the F-117. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry