Pilot Callsigns

Most recent additions

Tidbit

 (added: 4 Jun 2024)

I said the word tidbit... once.

Wawa

 (added: 5 Jun 2024)

Pilot went to the Wawa gas station next to MacDill late at night. Filled up his car, went to get some snacks, drove off. Forgot to disconnect gas pump. “Wheels Away While Attached”

Lefty

 (added: 8 Jun 2024)

Loves excessive full throttle. Yeah!

SMOAT

 (added: 8 Jun 2024)

Stands for Sh*t myself over Afghanistan, twice, self explanatory

Kermit

 (added: 30 May 2024)

On my second ship, we had a nugget helicopter pilot who was chronically seasick. His callsign was Kermit because it ain’t easy being green.

Mommy

 (added: 8 Jun 2024)

A pilot was asking for something on a radio, a pilot on the same channel chimed in and said "He wants his Mommy" resulting in the call sign "Mommy".

Black Widow

 (added: 4 Jun 2024)

Rejected every guy that asked her out and they all got butt-hurt about it. They were just deprived of women because it was 1 woman to every 100 guys.

BOB

 (added: 4 Jun 2024)

Pilot was short, it stands for "Baby On Board" (not to be confused with Bob from 'Top Gun: Maverick')

Trackless

 (added: 3 Jun 2024)

Aussie Vietnam War -era Caribou, Hercules, Huey, and later civvy 214ST and Bell 412 offshore pilot, spent the last years of a long, storied career serving in EMS. A man of huge personality but modest stature, rumoured to be so short his butt cheeks erased his footprints as he walked, meaning that he left no tracks.

Blender

 (added: 1 Jun 2024)

A harrier pilot who started his engines... with the covers still on.

Skidmark

 (added: 1 Jun 2024)

Forgot to disable the parking brake when doing a carrier launch, ruining the landing gear and leaving marks on the deck.

Fat Al

 (added: 1 Jun 2024)

Previous call sign was "Fatal", one day his wife was waiting for him when she called out "Hey, Fat Al" and that changing his call sign...

Leaky

 (added: 30 May 2024)

Last name Fawcett.

Loose

 (added: 30 May 2024)

The coolest I have known (and I have known many) was the handle accorded to a Marine aviator with the last name of Cannon. His handle: “Loose.” He was/is an exceptional aviator, an F/A-18 driver, now retired.

LIMPDIC

 (added: 30 May 2024)

There are many acronyms out there as well. On my second deployment, one of our pilots got stranded overnight in Sigonella due to an aircraft malfunction. After the aircraft was repaired, he was supposed to rejoin the carrier the next day, only a few hours before we were scheduled to transit the Suez Canal.

His overhead time comes and goes, no aircraft. We check with Sigonella - he had departed on time. We check with Red Crown and Strike - he had not checked in. We start thinking about SAR, while the carrier delays going through the Suez Canal (this is a really, really big deal).

We finally get a call from the pilot, who says he could not find the carrier and diverted to Souda Bay with hours of fuel remaining in his tanks. He went to the old coordinates from the previous day instead of the updated ones for the next day. It shouldn’t have mattered, because he knew we were going through the ditch in a couple of hours - it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what corner of the Mediterranean we were in, which would have put him close enough to pick up the ships TACAN radio beacon.

We ended up going through the Suez that night after much disturbance to local commercial shipping. We had to somehow work an Egyptian overflight clearance overnight (this is normally a 1 month+ process) so the pilot could fly over and meet us in the Red Sea the next day. The whole event was really embarrassing to our Squadron, and we cringed at what the next Foc’sle Follies roll call would bring our way.

His new call sign: LIMPDIC (Lost In Med, Please Don’t Inform CAG).

Axis

 (added: 27 May 2024)

There was a female pilot who had one Japanese parent and one German parent.

If you guys know history then this is self explanatory, if not, Germany and Japan were part of the axis powers during WW2, and were fighting against the USA, USSR, and UK, and they lost and now today both nations are memed to death due to involvement in WW2.

Bozo

 (added: 28 May 2024)

Lloyd ″Bozo″ Abel, he was holding the stick when the F14 buzzed the tower at Miramar in Top Gun.

In filming he annoyed Tom Cruise by doing a maneuver at an inconvenient time and threw Tom around in his seat. He said "They call me BOZO for a reason!"

Drill Bit

 (added: 1 May 2023)

Small boring tool

Twitty

 (added: 7 Sep 2022)

No cool story, surname is Conway. I'm an Australian pilot and when I was deployed in the middle east in an F-16 the US navy pilots I was flying with came up with it. Being Australian I had no idea who Conway Twitty was until then. Now I've moved into an F-22 and I got Conway Twitty nose art on my her as a bit of a memoir, still go by Twitty when flying with Americans.

DRKPL8S

 (added: 4 Jun 2022)

Pronounced as "Dorkplates." At the RAG, his squadron buddies discovered that he had bought himself a shiny new Camaro with a vanity plate reading "F18DRVR."

Ignition

 (added: 18 May 2024)

Tried to throttle up to taxi onto the runway, forgot the engine was off.

RAI

 (added: 20 May 2024)

Requires Adult Intervention. Pronounced as "Rye" A dumbass pilot who kept doing stupid stuff and ended up having a ‘buddy’ system so he’d stop getting into trouble.

Spurt

 (added: 23 Apr 2024)

Navy Hornet Pilot last name Seamon! After political correctness the Brass tried to change it to “Sport” but he wasn’t having any of it.

COOTS

 (added: 29 Apr 2024)

A nickname for that crewchief or pilot who is “Constantly Overemphasizing Own Tactical (or Technical) Significance,” which means (s)he thinks a little too highly of him/herself.

CHIMBO

 (added: 29 Apr 2024)

A moniker that stands for “Chick in a Man’s Body.”