【U. S. air power fighter designations】
—— Vol. 5 In 1962, eventually, reunited
The Navy designation scheme remained essentially unchanged until 1962. The new Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara reportedly got hopelessly confused when his subordinates attempted to explain the Air Force and Navy combat aircraft designation schemes to him. He was shocked to find that the Air Force and Navy had different designations for basically the same aircraft (e. g. the FJ Fury and the F-86 Sabre). McNamara ordered that the Air Force and Navy immediately adopt common designation schemes for their aircraft. Henceforth, the Navy was to abandon its separate designation scheme, and both services were to adhere to a new unified designation system which was quite similar in form to the Air Force scheme already in effect. However, some new category letters had to be provided to include aircraft types which the Air Force did not have (e. g. P for Patrol). By 1962, Air Force chronological numbers for bombers had reached 70, and chronological numbers for both fighters and transport aircraft had exceeded a hundred, and it was decided to start the chronological numbering scheme over again from one for all aircraft categories.
The new scheme meant that all Navy aircraft had to be redesignated (for example the Lockheed P2V Neptune became the P-2, the Vought F8U Crusader became the F-8, etc). However, for some reason it was decided not to change the designations of Air Force aircraft already in service in 1962 (the F-100 Super Sabre remained F-100, the Boeing B-52 remained B-52, etc). Most of the earlier sequence numbers in the new F-series were taken up by redesignated Navy fighters. Once these numbers were used up, the succeeding chronological numbers were allocated to new Air Force and Navy aircraft in the sequence in which they were ordered into service.
(the end.)
（網圖侵删）[兔子]
