Dubai Airshow: Let Pukin' Dogs lie

The single-seat F/A-18E comes from VFA-143, a frontline fighter-attack squadron assigned to carrier air wing seven (CVW-7) and recently embarked on board the USS Eisenhower.

The squadron’s distinctive badge is a winged black lion (or a mythical griffin), which indirectly led to the unit’s equally distinctive nickname – the world famous ‘Pukin’ Dogs’.

Legend has it that when an early squadron commander’s wife saw the badge, with its drooping head and gaping mouth, she opined (in front of the squadron’s junior pilots), that it looked more like a “pukin’ dog”. The pilots loved the description, and the name stuck until the infamous ‘tailhook’ sex scandal of 1991, when the unit was obliged to rename itself simply as ‘the Dogs’.
Fortunately, Admiral John Mazach, the then Commander of Naval Air Force US Atlantic Fleet, rescinded the ban in 1996, and sharp-sighted observers will no doubt notice a small version of the unit badge, with the legend ‘Pukin’ Dogs’ emblazoned on the Dubai jet’s belly tank.

And now you know why!