The Little World

I am puzzled. The name doesn’t seem to fit.

When US airplanes got a name – as opposed to a model number  – they generally got one that tied in with an established pattern – as a for instance, take the Boeing series of bombers – from B 17 to B-52 in four steps – Flying Fortress, Superfortress, Stratojet, and Stratofortress.

Or the Consolidated Liberator, Dominator, and Peacemaker. The Grumman cats. The Brewster ” B ” models. All of a family.

When the British bought or were given US planes, they generally re-christened them with something that would make them different from the US name – in many cases they took an American place as a name. They apportioned names to their own maker’s efforts by using an initial. They gave names to training aircraft that had a connection to schools.

Thus, the Martin Maryland, the Douglas Boston, the Harvard, Cornell, and Yale trainers.

Now, the Douglas Digby does have the alliteration that they assigned to Avro Anson or Westland Whirlwind, but as it was a direct buy or gift from the Douglas people – albeit a later development of the B 18 Bolo – I would have expected a US place name to be attached – Perhaps a Douglas Detroit or Des Moines or Dallas. Instead we got DIgby…the name of an RAF base in Lincolnshire.

Curious.

Yet, in other curious form, when the RCAF took North American Mitchell bombers onto their books and flew them they were still Mitchells. Perhaps the namers had just given up.