A Station hack (

British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...

) or Squadron hack (

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...

), is a utility aeroplane assigned to an air station or squadron (that normally flies another type of aircraft in its role), and utilised for run-of-the-mill activities, including delivering to, or collecting from, other airfields personnel, spare parts, equipment, or documents; activities that would not be considered worthy of the tactical, strategic, or larger transport aeroplanes that might be operated from the same air station. Often these would be "war weary" or otherwise obsolete aircraft no longer suitable for combat operations. War weary aircraft were sometimes refitted for combat. In one case, a

Boeing B-17E Flying Fortress The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engined heavy bomber developed in the 1930s for the United States Army Air Corps The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) was the aerial warfare service component of the United States Army be ...

due to be scrapped was used for a long range photoreconnaissance mission in the southwest Pacific. The term is derived from the equestrian term for a

horse The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million y ...

used by competitive riders for everyday, run-of-the-mill riding, as opposed to those used for competitive riding.

References

{{reflist Royal Air Force Military slang and jargon

See also

References