Navy Fighter Pilot Slang

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Corby. I’m calling from San Diego, California.

California.

Super duper. Welcome to the show. How can we help?

Thank you. I have a question about a certain word, a military slang word that makes not a lot of sense to me.

I grew up out here in San Diego, and when I was a kid, my dad was a Navy fighter pilot.

And I don’t know if you know any fighter pilots, but they’ve got some pretty amazing stories to tell.

And I just pick his brain. I’m like, tell me stories, tell me stories.

And he tells all these great stories. However, when he tells them, he uses all the military slang.

So thankfully, my mom is nearby, and she can do the translation.

And most of it makes perfect sense.

So he will bang off the cat. So that means he’s getting taken off from the aircraft carrier, aided by the catapult.

Yeah, cat’s worth the catapult, right?

Oh, bang off the cat, did you say?

Bang off the cat.

So that means you’re taking off from the aircraft carrier, and you’ve got to get this very heavy jet off the 500-foot runway, and you don’t have time to just, like, speed up and, you know, ascend.

So they use a catapult.

When they come in to land, getting on the deck is really hard.

So a pitching deck, so let’s say it’s really stormy, and that deck is going up and down, and you’re trying to get this jet back on deck.

So there’s a thing called a meatball, and the meatball is this lighting system.

And you’re looking for the amber light, and it lines up with the green lights, and you see the meatball.

So that means it’s going to help you land.

Cool.

So this is all making sense.

You’re coming in, and they drop the tail hook.

The pilots drop the tail hook, and they actually put the plane into full afterburner because what they have to try to do is trap one of these four wires that are on the deck.

And if they miss a wire, they’ve got to be able to get that jet off the aircraft carrier.

So this is really hairy stuff, right?

Yeah.

So one time he was telling me this story.

He was carrier-calling. That means the pilots are out trying to – they’re qualifying to take off and land on aircraft carriers.

And he boltered. So he comes into land. He doesn’t trap one of the wires, right?

So he’s got to go up and come around again and try to get back on.

He tries again. He bolters again.

And then he says, oh, I had bingo fuel. And I’ve got to go to land. I’ve got to go to the divert field.

I’m like, what? Bingo?

He’s like, yeah, bingo fuel. Look at mom. She says, that means there’s a minimum amount of fuel, and he’s got just enough fuel to get back to land and land on a pre-designated runway, right?

Yeah, exactly.

And I look at my dad, and I shrug. I’m like, bingo? What? Why bingo?

And he pauses for a moment, and he’s like, I don’t know. It just means you’re out of fuel. You’ve got to go to land.

And I’m like, well, why isn’t it like Red Zone or Hot Picado or something scary?

Monopoly.

I know. I’m just thinking of, like, senior citizens at the community center on Saturday night.

You know, like, B-I-N-G-O-B. Like, it’s a fun thing, you know? It’s just a stressful situation for a pilot.

I mean, especially if you don’t have a divert fuel and you’re at war and you’ve got bingo fuel, I mean, you’ve got to get on that aircraft carrier.

Anyway, so I thought I’d call you guys and see if you knew.

I am highly entertained by you, Corby.

Outstanding.

I don’t know either.

Oh, no. I have a dumb look on my face.

Oh, no. Actually, if you go back, you can find uses of this as far back as the 1950s.

It pops up here and there in collections of Navy slang.

Actually, even in the New York Times in a list of jet talk, I think they call it.

And nobody anywhere even bothers to try to figure out the origin of it.

But the best theory that I’ve seen, and this was derived in the modern age, say in the last 20 years or so, is it simply means your number came up.

And by that, I mean, before you go out, apparently, this is what I understand, your dad can tell you for sure.

Before you go out on a run, a sortie, you have to do the calculations to figure out how much time you’ve got for your mission or for whatever you’re supposed to be doing until you’re at the bingo fuel level where you have just enough fuel to either get back to your point of origin or to the nearest diversion, right?

The nearest base where you can land instead of your point of origin.

And that’s a number that you are very conscious of. You know that number.

It is a number practically tattooed in your brain until you get back.

And so when you hit bingo fuel, it’s literally your number came up and you’re shouting bingo because bingo fuel, I got to go back.

Yeah. This aircraft is bingo, I’m headed back.

Yeah, I would think it’s like the end of the game. You know, you win the bingo game.

Yeah, you’re done. Somebody yells bingo. You’re out of there. You’re finished.

A couple of the descriptions I’ve seen suggest that it’s bingo plus some reserves.

But other people are claiming that it’s bingo plus and there’s no reserves. There’s nothing else.

It’s only the fuel to get back.

And then the other thing you’ll see if you Google this, which is really funny, is the kind of polite arguing about bingo fuel and what it means between the military flyers and the non-military flyers.

Because the non-military flyers hate to see the military jargon kind of creep into the regular aviation.

It’s pretty funny.

You should never use that because people won’t understand you.

Yeah, I saw that. I did Google that.

And I got some of those results that you got.

But I like your idea of, like, bingo. Like, okay, your number’s up.

Except that when you get bingo, it’s like a really good thing, you know, in the game.

Well, I’m thinking maybe it is logical.

I mean, think about when you’re playing bingo and you’ve got your head over all those cards and you’re following along and maybe you just need one more number.

And then someplace else in the room you hear somebody yell, bingo!

And everybody goes, whoa. I mean, that makes logical sense to me.

I’m not a fighter pilot. It’s a half-cocked theory anyway.

The truth is most slang is, unless it’s really obvious, most slang is lost.

You know, we don’t know the origins of it.

There’s some stuff in this New York Times list, for example, that’s kind of obvious.

They call propeller aircraft spam cans.

Oh, you kind of get the joke that it’s just a piece of metal up in the air.

Somebody who’s got the clanks is nervous. Maybe you’ve heard that one before.

Brain bucket is your crash helmet.

Some of these are really obvious, but bingo is not obvious at all, you know?

Well, I hope nobody minds if it creeps into my vocabulary because I think I’m going to start using that in my car.

Or at the end of the night when you’re tired and you want to go home and everyone else is still partying.

You go, oh, I got bingo for you. I got to go home.

Well, yeah, yeah, personally, too. That works.

Corby, this is a lot of fun. We appreciate your calling about all this.

Well, thanks. It was fun to talk to you guys.

Yeah, thank you very much. I learned a bunch from you.

I did. Sure did, yeah.

Take care now, all right? Give her best to your dad.

All right.

Okay, I will. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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