shrike wrote:
Perhaps semi-official. I have a Lycoming poster - 1943- on the wall that calls it out as 'Jeep'
Any chance you could post a picture of the poster - or at least the relevant portion?
A quick search of Newspapers.com found potential point in favor of both names.
One article noted that the Fledgling name was previously used by the pre-1929 Curtiss company for the
Model 48/51 biplane. The
other article pointed out that the company developed the
VZ-7, which was unofficially called a "flying jeep". However, the other entrants in the competition used similarly jeep inspired names.
Incidentally,
another article I came across (which used the term to refer to the C-46 in
much the same way as "flying fortress" was for the B-17) led to the discovery that the idea of a "flying freight car" was popular during the war. A
second article from 1939 jokingly notes that TWA told hoboes that there were unfortunately no "flying freightcars". Interestingly, it goes on to note that "TWA men say that maybe the 'flying box car' idea grew out of their move about three years ago when the airline removed all the seats from its tri-motored planes and converted them into an air express unit." As evidence of how popular the concept became, according to
one article eventually no less than President Roosevelt addressed the issue as it was one of "two issues that have profoundly stirred the American people". It was was apparently tied to a proposal by Henry Kaiser to replace cargo ships with airplanes to avoid enemy submarines. (If this sounds familiar, recall that the original designation for the
Spruce Goose was the "HK-1".) This generated an
editorial column published the following day next to a cartoon showing "air power" as the winged Pegasus next to a slow moving ox representing "sea transport". Just over a week later, an
article declared that the C-54s in production by Douglas were "Flying Freight Cars for U.S. Army" "with capacities equal to those of standard railway boxcars". By 1943 the term was being connected with the "colored front-page fantasies of the old 'Popular Mechanics'" - as
one article states. A
another article published only six days later uses the term for CG-4s. This would morph into fantastical ideas of for future transport, with
one article written by a congressman in 1944 envisioning a "sky train" where civilians boarded multiple color coded gliders launched with RATO and towed in trail behind an airliner.
All in all, this seems to be the origin of not only the unofficial "Flying Boxcar" nickname for the B-24 (as seen in the nose art of a
B-24J and
F-7), but also the official one for the C-119. (A name that was also
present on the nose of the prototype C-82.) It also likely influenced the potentially apocryphal statement about the
Budd RB that "for an aircraft built by a railroad car company, it indeed handled like one." Furthermore, the image of "[a]irplanes towing gliders from supply depots to the battle lines" is likely the inspiration for the "Skytrain" name for the C-47. Finally, the theme, now far removed from it's original basis, would eventually be immortalized in the nickname of the
B-29 that bombed Nagasaki.
EDIT (22-10-18): A couple more points reinforce the hold the concepts above had on the popular discourse at the time. First, the 1945 film
The World Owes Me a Living features the concept of a "freight-carrying glider" as a major plot point. (
Apparently, the Horsa is used as the stand-in.) Interestingly, given the use of the mythical animal in the cartoon mention above, the pilots in the film operate out of "Pegasus Flying Field". (The Pegasus was also used as a logo by Mobil, which was involved in aviation during the 1920s and 30s. Other uses of the name include a
model airplane from 1929, a
series of engines developed by Bristol, and the
KC-46.) Meanwhile, some "Flying Boxcar" imagery very similar to the nose art on the B-24s mentioned above was depicted on the cover of the
1951 book Boxcars in the Sky.
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