From OM:
On Fri, 11 Jun 2004 18:08:46 +0100, Graeme Carrott
wrote:

In article , Hi Derek!
writes

While the Air Farce is capable of many, many insane
and idiotic gestures, without help from my beloved Navy there is
absolutely no way they could have performed a "21 *ship* flyover"
during the funeral processon to the Rotunda on Wednesday.

Dunno about the USAF, but the RAF definitely refer to packages of
aircraft as 'xxx-ship formations'

...That's Englandland. They have a different name for everything.

I know what you mean, though....

...Yeah, it caught a lot of people by surprise where I was watching it
on Wednesday waiting out the heavy rains that moved in. And to be
totally honest, if a bimbo dancer with just three brain cells to rub
together between two fingers can point out that ships don't
fly...well, you get my point.

It doesn't take all that many brain cells to look up the word "ship"
in the dictionary. At the risk of broadening one's perspective on the
meaning of certain words, in this case you have to stretch all the way
to definition #2:


ship
n.

1.
a. A vessel of considerable size for deep-water navigation.
b. A sailing vessel having three or more square-rigged masts.
2. An aircraft or spacecraft.

....
(http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=ship&r=67)


For anyone who hasn't been to an airshow and picked up on how standard
this terminology is, you can try Googling ["four ship" flyover
site:.mil] and see for yourself that there are plenty of hits from
official US military sources.


~ CT