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TIL one of the two pilots in this incident is named Nguyen Van Bay, yet is not the same Nguyen Van Bay who is a famous jet fighter ace for the Vietnam People's

• freddie_mercury 4y ago
  Nguyen Van Bay is just a kind of nickname that means "he's the seventh son". Especially back in those days of large families it isn't massively surprising that there'd be another seventh son in the airforce. Vietnamese Wikipedia says he actually went by the nickname Bay A (literally 7-A) in the air force, presumably because of the other guy also nicknamed Bay. The Nguyen family name is obviously super common. Van is a fairly common middle name. Especially in the south of Vietnam it was somewhat common, especially back then to just call people by their birth order. "Aunt Eight", "Uncle Two", "Sister Three", etc. His actual name was Nguyen Van Hoa.