Issue No 21 THE AVIATION HISTORIAN 9
Alias the Aardvark
SIR — What a great idea of Brian Cope’s (Air
Correspondence, TAH20, in response to Chris
Gibson’s excellent article Swing-wing London?,
TAH17) that the RAF should have called the
General Dynamics F-111 the Liberator 2; even I,
as a great fan of the Consolidated B-24 Liberator,
never thought of that!
However, since Australia was moving in “lock
step” with the USA at this time, the fact that the
F-111 was the only aircraft in USAF history not
to be given a name (officially) while in service,
was telling on the Air Board over here.
Various names were considered for the aircraft
in Australian service: Annihilator, Destroyer and
Falcon, as well as at least 18 Aboriginal names
for weapons. The fact that a little later a failed
attempt to name the Bell 206 Kiowa helicopter in
Australian Army service as the “Kalkadoon” is
an indication that it was a good idea that the
latter was not attempted; fortunately, Kiowa
it remained.
It seems extremely unlikely that in late 1966
(when naming was considered) that there would
have been anyone on the Air Board who could
have drawn the connection between General
Dynamics and Consolidated/Consolidated-
Vultee down to the Liberator.
The aircraft was unofficially named Aardvark
by the USAF (“earth pig” in Afrikaans), which
was more colloquially rendered in Australia
simply as “the Pig”; this was reportedly because
it “had a long snout, rummaged in the dirt and
was active at night”. Aardvark became the
official USAF name for the aircraft after
retirement in 1996.
Bob Livingstone Samford, Qld, AustraliaOutstanding officers
SIR — I enjoyed Santiago Rivas’s article Blue On
Blue in TAH19, on the 1955 revolutionary activity
in Argentina involving Gloster Meteors. Very
well done, and with excellent supporting images.
On page 88, in his description of the attack on
the ARA Cervantes and ARA La Rioja, he may not
have been aware that, as incredible as it might
seem now, there were intelligence reports at the
time in both the USA and Britain suggesting that
at least two of the four Meteors attacking these
ships were flown by former Luftwaffe pilots!
By March 1956 this had been thoroughly
rebuffed, but it was the subject of truly wild
speculation at the time. Apparently that first
attack on the two surface vessels was accompa-
nied by a solitary IAé-24 Calquin, piloted by
Capt Julio César Cáceres.
The crews of the Meteors that attacked the
naval vessels were described by the US Assistant
Air Attaché at the time, Lt-Col Lowell E. May, as
“very excellent pilots and outstanding officers”,
but he lamented the fact that they all were
apparently facing immediate discharge from the
service “within a very short time” as a result of
their participation in the revolt. Besides Vice-
comodoro Síster, the other Meteor pilots were
apparently Vicecomodoro Angel Orlando Perez
Laborda, Capitáns Raul Ernesto Lopez, Jorge
Raul Quagliardi and Primer Teniente Ernesto
Jorge Andradas. Three other Meteor pilots, based
at Morón (and who then flew to Rio Cuarto,
where they serviced their aircraft and then made
the attack on Córdoba), were Comandantes
Eduardo Catala, Daniel Pedro Aubone and Capt
Guillermo Lucio Bernardez Dominguez.
Dan Hagedorn Maple Valley, WA, USA
TAH
Send readers’ letters for publication to: Air Correspondence, The Aviation Historian, PO Box 962, Horsham
RH12 9PP, UK, or (preferably) e-mail them to the Managing Editor at [email protected]
KEEPING TRACK with the free TAH Index...
TWENTY-ONE ISSUES of The Aviation Historian add
up to a serious body of work — and, if you have most
or all of them on your bookshelf, you will find our
Index a valuable resource for pinpointing subjects,
articles, authors, illustrations and more.
Unless you visit our website regularly, though, you
may not be aware that the Index is available there as
a free downloadable PDF which you can print out or
keep on your computer. We update it on publication
of each new issue, so you can find what you’re looking
for without having to leaf through multiple documents.
Visit http://www.theaviationhistorian.com and simply select
“Index” to download it; if you’re in the UK and don’t
have access to a computer, send us a Large Letter
stamped A4 envelope and we will post a copy to you.