Summary WWII fighter planes earned deadly nicknames like "fork-tailed devil" and "Whistling Death" from adversaries. The Vought F4U Corsair had a 12:1 air-to-air kill ratio against the Mitsubishi A6M Zero in WWII. Retired in 1953, 45 privately owned F4Us can still be found in the US, displayed in museums and flown by organizations.
Besides actual kill ratios against enemy aircraft, one of the great testaments to a fighter plane's combat efficacy is the respectfully deadly nicknames bestowed upon it by those adversaries. For example, during World War II, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning was nicknamed " Der Gabelschwanz Teufel " (the fork-tailed devil) by Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe . Though the post-WWII German Bundeswehr saw fit to change its army's name from Wehrmacht to Heer and its navy's name from Kriegsmarine to Bundesmarine , the air force still retains the Luftwaffe moniker.
Lockheed's P-38 Lightning was one of the iconic Allied fighters of WWII. We examine how it revolutionized aerial combat. In the case of another famous WWII American fighter plane, the US Navy and Marine Corps' Vought F4U Corsair, the nickname of "Whistling Death" (口笛を吹く死/ kuchibue wa fuku shi) bestowed upon it by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; 大日本帝國海軍/ Dai-Nippon Teikoku Kaigun ) and Imperial Japanese Army Air Service (IJAAS; 大日本帝國陸軍航空部隊/ Dainippon Teikoku Rikugun Kōkūbutai ) may very well have been apocryphal, as official Japanese wartime records do no.