Question about slang " Tango" (=enemy)

[Jonathan Lighter]

I first encountered "Tango" in the Navy SEAL novels by Richard Marcinko and
John Weisman, beginning with the quasi-factual _Rogue Warrior_ (Simon &
Schuster, 1993), p. 315: "If I was a fucking tango I wouldn't go around
pissing away my tactical fucking surprise with any fucking RPG."

Former navy lieutenant commander Marcinko uses the word exclusively (AFAIK)
to mean "terrorist" and not "enemy" in general:

1995 Marcinko & Wesiman  _Red Cell_, (N.Y.: S&S) 389: "Tango Adam
Henry...radio talk for terrorist asshole."

Someone else may know whether "Target down!" is a customary phrase.

JL
On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 8:42 PM, Cohen, Gerald Leonard <gcohen at mst.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Cohen, Gerald Leonard" <gcohen at MST.EDU>
> Subject:      Question about slang " Tango" (=enemy)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>   Today a student asked me how slang "tango" (enemy) arose, a term I had
> never heard of before. For a possible answerI found the following on the
> Internet(
> http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_they_come_up_with_the_enemy_nicknames_like_Charlie_Tango_and_Jerry
> )
>
> <snip>
>
> "Tango is again derived from the phonetic alphabet, with Tango being the
> phonetic equivalent of T. Thus target was shortened to T and then
> subsequently Tango. Therefore when someone says "Tango down" they are
> stating target down."
>
> <snip>
>
> This sounds convincing, but I thought I'd check it first with ads-l. Can I
> pass this along to my student with assurance that it's correct? Btw, I don't
> find this "Tango" in OED 3.
>
> Gerald Cohen
>
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