What affectionate nickname did Sunderland crews give their own aircraft?

Sunderland crews sometimes nicknamed their aircraft "The Pig," because the early models were underpowered.

German fighter pilots had another name for the big British four-engined flying boat they kept running into over the Atlantic: Fliegendes Stachelschwein, the "flying porcupine." The nickname was born on 3 April 1940, when a No. 228 Squadron Sunderland, attacked by six Junkers Ju 88 fighters off Norway, shot one down and damaged the others so badly that they fled. Early Sunderlands carried seven machine guns; in the bloodiest years over the Bay of Biscay, some carried up to eighteen, hence the "porcupine."

Short Brothers started from its elegant Empire commercial flying boat and turned it into a military patrol aircraft. The Sunderland was developed specifically to Air Ministry specification R.2/33, which called for a long-range patrol and reconnaissance flying boat for the Royal Air Force. The prototype K4774 made its first flight on 16 October 1937, fitted with Bristol Pegasus X radial engines. It was huge: a two-deck hull with bunks, a galley and a workshop, crewed by ten to thirteen men. After the war it kept flying maritime patrols until the Avro Shackleton arrived, carried supplies during the Berlin Airlift by landing on the city's lakes, and supported Arctic expeditions. The RAF kept it in military use until 1959, and the last examples remained in service with the Royal New Zealand Air Force until the late 1960s.