The naming policy may have changed over the years Dave, but a coherent one seems to have been non existant by the late ’60s

Yep! The ‘naming’ of the VC10 confirms that!! It seems to have been the manufacturer gave a list of possibilities, then the Air Staff decided on which one they liked.

US Names were adopted for NATO commonality and multi-national projects needed names that were easily translatable.

Shades of the aircraft names thread here.

Eagle dosen’t fit well at all, the Harrier and Kestrel were very strong VSTOL fighter relations and the Hawk a trainer, all were HS designs and could be argued as not being fast jets.
There really dosen’t seem to be much of a common naming policy at the time, with Lightning and Phantom (fighters) and Canberra, Buccaneer and Jaguar (Strike) all about at the planned service time.
If it was to follow suit at all it would have been named after a city of the UK (or ex Commonwealth), but which one would have suited?
If I had to guess I would have said that it would have picked up the wind theme again – like the Tornado did.

As I said in the Names thread, the policy changed!

Eagle actually may not have been the chosen name – this thread reveals a lot!!

http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,15271.0.html

First point – the rules changed from time to time and not everything followed the rules. The system changed in 1927, 1932, 1937 and 1939, so an aircraft introduced across those times may have had different rules applied.

So if we take Bombers, the 32 system split those into Day, Army Co-op, Night, General Purpose and Transport!!

Day – Animals (except Cats) – Hart, Hind etc
Army Co-OP – Classical Names – Lysander, Hector
Night – Inland towns of the British Empire OR towns associated with the RAF
GP – British Historical NAMES
Transport – General Towns and sea ports of the British Empire

In 1937, this was changed so that Light, Medium and Heavy Bombers became one class with nomenclature of ‘place names’ either inland towns or associated with british history’. For a short time, these had to begin with ‘B’

Then, in 1939 the policy became:

Bombers: Places either inland towns or associated with British history (this latter catches lots of now obscure places that would be well known to students of British history in the 30s)

General Purpose Torpedo/General Recce: (The old GP class now being a light bomber) – British Historical names

So, taking your examples (me in bold italics)

Transport.
Albemarle (Duke title) – originally a recce/day bomber, so presumably given the Names from history

Light Bomber.
Blenheim (castle/battle honour) Place associated with British History

Medium Bomber.
Wellesley (surname) – Originally built to a GP specification, so Name from British history
Hereford (Vicount title) – Place name
Wellington (Duke title) – Place name
Hampden (Vicount title) – PLace Name
Buckingham (Duke and Earl title) – Place Name

Torpedo bomber.
Beaufort (Duke title) – GP Torpedo- name from British History

The only system i see is the connection to the nobility and the idea of matching first letters to something.

Hampden was, in the 1932 system, a Night Bomber so was an Inland town in the British Empire. (It’s in New Zealand)

Wellesley was originally designed as a ‘General Purpose’ aircraft, so got the name from a historical British figure.

Wellington is interesting – it fits the ‘inland towns’ classification for night bombers (One in Somerset for example) but was chosen/suggested by Vickers because Arthur Wellesley became the Duke of Wellington (Wellessly begat Wellington), but as it met the ‘towns criteria, it was accpeted – so it shows that a certain amount of subterfuge was used if approproiate!

Tomahawk is equally interesting – at the time the P-40 entered service Fighters were given names suggesting speed or aggressiveness, the US called them ‘Hawks’ but birds names were reserved for engines.

Re the C-47, if the specific memo from the AM still exists, it will be because it is alliterative and a US District/state

Thanks Dave, I’ll try and remember the correct fact now! 😀 That was from Names with Wings?

Yes indeed. By Gordon Wansbrough-White. UK Military naming systesm from 1878 to 1994 are detailed.

I had always assumed that the Whitley was named after the area in Coventry where one of the AWA airfields was? Maybe one for RP Smith to answer.

That’s right, near Whitley Abbey

You can’t compare what names were applied pre-war with those applied post war, or even during the war (and the Admiralty named Naval aircraft) – the policy changed several times.

I can’t find Names with Wings, but when I do I’ll look up what was in force when Dakota was chosen