The System
The system conveyed its information in the form:
- (Mission)(Design Number)(Manufacturer)-(Subtype)(Minor Modification)
For example, F4U-1A referred to the first minor modification (A) to the first major subtype (1) of Chance-Vought's (U) fourth (4) fighter (F) design.
For the first few years after the system was introduced, the manufacturer's letter and the mission letter were sometimes reversed. If it was the manufacturer's first design for that particular mission, there was no number before the manufacturer letter.
Read more about this topic: 1922 United States Navy Aircraft Designation System
Famous quotes containing the word system:
“Social and scientific progress are assured, sir, once our great system of postpossession payments is in operation, not the installment plan, no sir, but a system of small postpossession payments that clinch the investment. No possible rational human wish unfulfilled. A man with a salary of fifty dollars a week can start payments on a Rolls-Royce, the Waldorf-Astoria, or a troupe of trained seals if he so desires.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“The dominant metaphor of conceptual relativism, that of differing points of view, seems to betray an underlying paradox. Different points of view make sense, but only if there is a common co-ordinate system on which to plot them; yet the existence of a common system belies the claim of dramatic incomparability.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)