Nice Again wrote:
That's one of the points, you can tell the mfg. Doh!

I'd call it a bug, not a feature. If it told you the designer, it might be
of some value, but manufacturer names are often too fluid to be helpful. As
is, the system is potentially quite confusing, as the examples given before
can show (F4U, FG and F3B are the same plane!?!) It makes little sense to
use a system that requires different designations for the same aircraft just
because it was built by different companies or the factory changed
ownership.

Moreover, from an amateur's perspective, the Navy system makes it difficult
to instantly recognize which aircraft came first in production, or tell
which are contemporaries of each other. The F4U and F4D aren't even
remotely of the same era, for example, but you can't tell that from their
designations. OTOH, you can tell that the F-14, -15, and -16 came in that
order and probably realize that they are rough contemporaries.

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