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The Big Fat Aeroplane Video Thread!


BluBear

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Negative Nick, the current F-16 variant is the C (block 50) in USAF service and all variants of the F-16 have been known by their pilot and engineer community (and by extension the rest of the military) as Vipers

The USAF (and to some regard the US Navy) have always held the official names for their aircraft in a poor light, and nearly all were spurned, with the various communities christening their airframes with their own unique sobriquet; in some regards just as a pilot earns his callsign as a nickname, so too the aircraft were awarded their own unique names by the pilots and crews that flew them.

E.G:

A-1 Skyraider - "Spad"

A-4 Skyhawk - "Scooter"

A-7 Corsair II - "SLUF"

A-10 Thunderbolt II - "Warthog"

SR-71 Blackbird - "Sled"

B-1 Lancer - "Bone"

E-2 Hawkeye - "Hummer"

UH-1 Iroquois - "Huey"

 

The Viper nickname came two-fold

1. Partially aesthetic - from the LERXes that resembled the hoods of a cobra

2. When the F-16 was first introduced "Battlestar Gallactica" was on TV - the flight stick of the good-guy ships, the colonial Vipers, was almost identical to the F-16; given this and the almost space age nature of the FBW controls and the remarkable performance of the early light F-16s, their pilots would joke that they were going to fly their "Viper".

 

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Block 70/72 is the latest version i belive, block 50 is what we have in dcs, and the 50/52 were the last to be called C's i think.

The V designation is for the block 70/72's and existing f16s can be retrofitted to this standard, along with some being built from scratch, these are all for other foreign states though, not the US.😇

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On 3/11/2020 at 1:33 PM, Jabo said:

When did the F-16 become the Viper as opposed to the Fighting Falcon?

This is where I got the initial answer.

https://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/f-16v-viper-fighting-falcon-multi-role-fighter/

Interesting read, but not sure how much credence I give it.

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