That was not an Air Force practice when I was in. In Vietnam, we each had an assigned call sign, but it was unit based. At my first assignment, we all had the call sign Tonto, and I was Tonto 04. At Ban Me Thuot, I was Mike 58. The unit commander always had 01, the ops officer was 02, and so forth. But there were no "cutesy" nicknames. In Training Command, your call sign changed with every flight.
That may have changed, because I now see pilots with nicknames on their flight suit name patches.
