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During World War II, there was a system of Allied reporting names for Japanese aircraft, such as "Zeke" for the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter and "Betty" for the Mitsubishi G4M bomber. The system generally used male "hillbilly" names for fighters, female names for bombers, plus tree and bird names for trainers and gliders.

Post-war, reporting names were extended to Soviet aircraft. Fighters had names beginning with F, bombers with B, transports with C, and so on. One-syllable names were used for prop planes and two-syllable words for jets.

The Japanese naming system for aircraft was, perhaps, hard to understand, with Japanese years used for "Type 0", "Type 99", and so on, plus type letters, numbers and manufacturer codes, similar to the US Navy system, where the 4th bomber design by Mitsubishi would be "G4M" in the same way Grumman's fourth fighter would be "F4F" for the US. But the Soviet system, at least for aircraft (not for missiles), was quite straightforward and much like the wartime German names, with manufacturer abbreviations and model numbers.

Why wasn't a similar system assigned to German aircraft? If reporting names for German aircraft were introduced, what might it have looked like? Would there be separate names for models of the same aircraft, in the way that we sometimes use German phonetic alphabet names, such as "Dora" for the Bf 109D or Fw 190D?

IOTL, reporting names were assigned for German aircraft allegedly in Japanese use (the aircraft were not actually used by Japan):
  • Bess (Heinkel He 111)
  • Doc (Messerschmitt Bf 110)
  • Fred (Focke Wulf Fw 190A-5)
  • Irene (Junkers Ju 87A)
  • Janice (Junkers Ju 88A-5)
  • Mike (Messerschmitt Bf 109E)
  • Trixie (Junkers Ju 52/3m)
  • Trudy (Focke Wulf Fw 200 Kondor)
[from Wikipedia, "World War II Allied reporting names for Japanese aircraft" template]

Can you think of more memorable and distinctive reporting names? And how might the system have been extended to cover missiles like the V2, or even vehicles?
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