Situation 1998 in Germany!
At the ILA 1998 in Berlin I asked someone at the stand of Daimler-Benz Aerospace about naming the Eurofighter “Typhoon”. I had only read about the naming in Air International June 1998. In that issue stood the “the aircraft will be formally re-named Eurofighter Typhoon for marketing outside Europe”.
The people at the stand could not tell me official, but the german part of EFA did not like the name “Taifun/Typhoon” , because in bad remembrance of the Hawker Typhoon during WW2. I answered back, the famous german sports and touring aircraft Bf 108 “Taifun” is known for the development of metal construction. Why not remember that aircraft?
But one of them answered, the Eurofighter programm is to be historically clean.
In the end they gave me a nice poster showing all DA’s. 🙂 🙂
You must remember now, that this discusion happend before the german parlament elections on Sep 27th 1998, as a Red-Green coalition (Chancellor Schröder) won. Before the elections, both parties, SPD and Die Grünen-Bündnis 90, were against the Eurofighter!!! Some rumors said at that time that Germany might step out of EF after the elections, so DASA tried everything not to get bad news about the Eurofighter programm!!!
Politics again!!! 😡
Nowadays, most of the pilots at the GAF call the EF 2000 Eurofighter, short “Eufi”, as like “Toni” for the Tornado.
Maybe soon, it might be also called “Taifun”.
As we all know, some aircraft are more known under their “unofficial” name as under their official name e.g. F-16 Fighting Falcon, better known as “Viper”. 😉
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