Pickle Off

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Mike from Mondovi, Wisconsin.

Welcome to the program, Mike.

So what’s up?

I’m a career Air Force pilot. I’ve retired about 15 years ago, but I realized since I went to pilot training in 69, I was always just taught that the button that you drop a bomb with is called the pickle button. And it’s just one of those words I always accepted, and I never thought of why it was called something as strange as a pickle button. And your program got me thinking about it, and I couldn’t come up with a really good answer. And so I thought, well, maybe you could help me.

And I asked a couple people, and my son-in-law, who’s in the Air Force now as a pilot, had one possible explanation that, you know, maybe like in World War II or any time still, if you get in a pickle, you know, like in a problem, you often will drop your weapons or tanks to reduce the weight of the aircraft, or like you could jump from enemy aircraft to make yourself more maneuverable or reduce your weight if you’re having an engine problem, that type of thing. So maybe, he said, you get in a pickle, you pickle it off. Now, that had a certain logic to it, but I have no idea if that’s true.

You pickle it off, did you say?

Yeah, they always use that term. You pickle off the bombs or you pickle off your fuel tanks.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Wow.

Well, now help me picture this, Mike. Where is the pickled button exactly? And what did you fly?

Well, I flew many airplanes. I started way back in Vietnam in an A-1 Sky Raider, which was an old prop World War II almost airplane, and ended up in F-111s, which were kind of a fighter-bomber, and a few other ones in between. But they almost all have the same Air Force stick, and there’s a button on the side. And usually one towards the top, too. There’s two different buttons, but depending on which stations you’re dropping off of and so forth. But there’s just a little red button on the side and on the top of the stick that you fly the aircraft with.

Oh, wow.

This is like a toggle switch or a lever switch?

No, it’s just a red button that you push. You just push straight down.

I thought for sure you were going to say it was green.

No, it’s red. And it’s more or less flush with the console or just a little bit above the console?

Yeah, it sticks up a little bit off your control stick that you’re flying the airplane with.

Okay.

And you can just hit it, and it’s basically the button for releasing your bombs from the airplane.

Okay. Wow. This is all really interesting. And I like your son-in-law’s theory, but I think he’s close, but he’s not quite there. There’s a little more to this story. And let me tell you a little back story on how I know this.

When I worked for the, I used to edit the Historical Dictionary of American Slang, and I actually had the pleasure of working on the letter P, which is yet to be published. And one of the entries for that is pickle. And there’s just a ton of language that’s in the military that’s related to pickle, including what you talked about, which is to pickle can mean to drop your bombs or to drop your equipment. But older than that still are two uses in the United States Navy where a torpedo as early as the 1930s was called a pickle. And they also used it to mean to bomb, to bomb or to fire your torpedo.

And I believe what happened is that it originated with the United States Navy because of the shape of the torpedoes, because they look vaguely like a pickle.

Oh, okay.

So you are, again, 1931, I have a definite usage for, and maybe as early as 1917. It’s hard to say because the sources are kind of unclear. But maybe as early as 19… Because remember, underwater warfare, it’s got a good long history. In any case, so the torpedoes look kind of like pickles. Therefore, if you are firing that, you are pickling. And the button that would fire it is called the pickle button or the pickle switch. And I believe that button was borrowed into aircraft, which came after the submarines. The Navy actually originally had a lot of the earliest expertise in aerial warfare. And so a lot of the language came over from the Navy into what later became the Air Force and so on.

Other people who know more about the history of our armed services can talk a lot more about that. And then the term kind of spread off from there. And then by the 1960s, by the time you showed up in Vietnam, the pickle switch or the pickle button, it was called both things, or sometimes it was just called the pickle, became to be used not only to drop bombs, sometimes to activate cameras on the underbelly of the aircraft, sometimes to use just to open the bay doors, or sometimes just to get your sighting gear in order. That was the pickle button. You press the button to get your sighting gear in order, and then somebody else behind you would do the act of pushing out the cargo or pushing out the bombs or releasing it or doing whatever needed to be done. And to pickle, meaning to torpedo or to bomb, has always been a part of that. You can read news stories from the 1960s where pilots talk about having to pickle a whole region and talk about dropping napalm as pickling.

Oh, my gosh. Wow.

Yeah, it’s the standard term. I don’t know if I – I hate to give the Navy credit for it, but as an old Air Force guy.

Well, the Navy’s older than the Air Force.

That’s true. I have to give them credit there. And I just thought I’ll have to give my wife a little credit because, not to be sexist, but I always called this the female feminine answer because I asked my wife about this several years ago, and that was her idea. She said, well, what’s the shape of a bomb? And I said, well, yeah, it could look kind of like a pickle, but I said, I don’t know, I just didn’t buy that. But she was actually, you know, I had closer to correct than I thought, so I’ll have to give her credit.

Oh, that’s great.

Well, that’s wonderful. I will make sure and tell my son-in-law, and I appreciate your help and answer on this.

All right, super, Mike.

Terrific, Mike.

Okay, well, thank you very much. Have a great day.

Okay, you too.

Yep, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Wow, that was fascinating. I mean, and it makes perfect sense that it would be a euphemism for that sort of a jocular reference.

Well, the simple story is most often the right one.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

And for hour two of our pickle conversation, call us about the language you use in your job, whether you’re flying bombers or not, 1-877-929-9673, or send email to words@waywordradio.org.