American Phonetic Alphabet Pdf

1. American Military Phonetic Alphabet

• The Allied military phonetic spelling alphabets prescribe the words that are used to represent each letter of the alphabet, when spelling other words out loud, letter-by-letter, and how the spelling words should be pronounced.
• An Alphabetic Code Chart for English withthe International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) IPA symbols for phonemes and combined phonemes Easy‐to‐use notation for units of sound Graphemes, or spelling alternatives, within word examples which are code for the sounds IPA symbols for phonemes and combined phonemes.

From Alpha to Zulu

NATO and the U.S. military use the same phonetic alphabet. However, it is widely accepted and used in international radio communications on the sea, air, or land.

The International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet (IRSA) was created by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to help decipher similar sounding letters and numbers between different countries and organizations.

Phonetic Alphabet in the Military

The phonetic alphabet is a list of words used to identify letters in a message transmitted by radio, telephone, and encrypted messages. The phonetic alphabet can also be signaled with flags, lights, and Morse Code.

When on the radio, spoken words from an approved list are substituted for letters. For example, the word 'Army' would be 'Alfa Romeo Mike Yankee' when spelled in the phonetic alphabet. This practice helps to prevent confusion between similar sounding letters, such as 'm' and 'n,' and to clarify signals communications that may be garbled during transmission.

In military missions, the use of the phonetic alphabet has been used to communicate with the chain of command as to what phase of the mission has been successfully performed. For instance, if a SEAL Team has arrived on the beach and were undetected to continue the mission, they may have designated that as the first 'waypoint' and use the code word 'Alpha.' It will tell the upper-level chain of command where they are and if they are on schedule.

The phonetic alphabet The NATO Phonetic Alphabet was developed in the 1950s to avoid the misunderstanding caused by poor radio acoustics where an S and an F for example are easily confused.

An early version of the phonetic alphabet appears in the 1913 edition of The Navy Bluejackets’ Manual. Found in the Signals section, it was paired with the Alphabetical Code Flags defined in the International Code. Both the meanings of the flags (the letter which they represent) and their names (which make up the phonetic alphabet) were selected by international agreement. Later editions included the Morse code signal as well.

Military Phonetic Alphabet Over Time

Flags and Pennants Used by Navy / Sailing Vessels Worldwide

The Navy and other seafaring vessels use the visual symbol on the mast of the ship/boats to convey the status of the ship and crew. From emergencies to dredging operations and other occupations being accomplished by the boat and crew, flags are a way of communicating on the open waterways. As seen in the picture, all flags represent the phonetic alphabet and have meanings different than the above chart.

The use of alpha-phonetic symbols is to decrease radio traffic and to communicate status, request assistance, in code that can be internationally understood. The more tactical use of alpha-phonetics can be used similarly as code words to mission status, encrypted, and decrease open radio traffic with a line of sight communications with flags and lights.

Here are some common military uses of the phonetic alphabet used in both official military communications as well as the informal:

• Bravo Zulu (BZ) - means good job.
• Charlie Mike (CM) - means continue mission. Keep moving forward.
• 11 Bravo - Army infantry
• 40 Mike Mike - 40 millimeter

The Allied military phonetic spelling alphabets prescribe the words that are used to represent each letter of the alphabet, when spelling other words out loud, letter-by-letter, and how the spelling words should be pronounced. They are not a 'phonetic alphabet' in the sense in which that term is used in phonetics, i.e. they are not a system for transcribing speech sounds.

The Allied military radiotelephone spelling alphabets were created prior to World War I and evolved separately in the United States and the United Kingdom—and separately among the individual military services in the two countries—until being merged during World War II. The last WWII spelling alphabet continued to be used through the Korean War, being replaced in 1956 as a result of both countries adopting the ICAO/ITU Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, with the NATO members calling their usage the 'NATO Phonetic Alphabet'.

Sometime during WWII, the Allies had defined terminology to describe the scope of communications procedures among different services and nations. A summary of the terms used was published in a post-WWII NATO memo:^[1]

• combined—between services of one nation and those of another nation, but not necessarily within or between the services of the individual nations
• joint—between (but not necessarily within) two or more services of one nation
• intra—within a service (but not between services) of one nation

Thus, the Combined Communications Board (CCB) spelling alphabet was mandated for use when any U.S. military branch was communicating with any British military branch; when operating without any British forces, the Joint Army/Navy spelling alphabet was mandated for use whenever the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy were communicating in joint operations; if the U.S. Army was operating on its own, it would use its own spelling alphabet, in which some of the letters were identical to the other spelling alphabets and some completely different.

• 2United States military spelling alphabets
• 3United Kingdom military spelling alphabets
  • 3.3RAF radiotelephony spelling alphabet

WWII CCB and NATO alphabets[edit]

American Military Phonetic Alphabet

An alternative name for the ICAO spelling alphabet, 'NATO phonetic alphabet', exists because it appears in Allied Tactical Publication ATP-1, Volume II: Allied Maritime Signal and Maneuvering Book used by all allied navies of NATO, which adopted a modified form of the International Code of Signals. Because the latter allows messages to be spelled via flags or Morse code, it naturally named the code words used to spell out messages by voice its 'phonetic alphabet'. The name NATO phonetic alphabet became widespread because the signals used to facilitate the naval communications and tactics of NATO have become global.^[2] However, ATP-1 is marked NATO Confidential (or the lower NATO Restricted) so it is not available publicly. Nevertheless, a NATO unclassified version of the document is provided to foreign, even hostile, militaries, even though they are not allowed to make it available publicly. The spelling alphabet is now also defined in other unclassified international military documents.^[3] The NATO alphabet appeared in some United States Air Force Europe publications during the Cold War. A particular example was the Ramstein Air Base, Telephone Directory published between 1969 and 1973 (currently out of print). The USA and NATO versions had differences and the translation was provided as a convenience. Differences included Alfa, Bravo and Able, Baker for the first two letters.

The NATO phonetic spelling alphabet was first adopted on January 1, 1956, while the ICAO radiotelephony spelling alphabet was still undergoing final changes.^[4]

United States military spelling alphabets[edit]

U.S. Army radiotelephony spelling alphabet[edit]

^† 'Interrogatory' was used in place of 'Inter' in joint Army/Navy Operations.

U.S. Navy radiotelephony spelling alphabet[edit]

The U.S. Navy's first phonetic spelling alphabet was not used for radio, but was instead used on the deck of ships 'in calling out flags to be hoisted in a signal'. There were two alternative alphabets used, which were almost completely different to one another, with only the code word 'Xray' in common.^[14]

The U.S. Navy's first radiotelephony phonetic spelling alphabet was published in 1913, in the Naval Radio Service's Handbook of Regulations developed by Captain William H. G. Bullard. The Handbook's procedures were described in the November 1917 edition of Popular Science Monthly.^[15]

Joint Army/Navy radiotelephony spelling alphabet[edit]

The Joint Army/Navy (JAN) spelling alphabet was developed by the Joint Board on November 13, 1940, and it took effect on March 1, 1941.^[20][21] It was reformulated by the CCB following the entrance of the U.S. into World War II by the CCB 'Methods and Procedures' committee,^[21] and was used by all branches of the United States Armed Forces until the promulgation of its replacement, the ICAO spelling alphabet (Alfa, Bravo, etc.), in 1956. Before the JAN phonetic alphabet, each branch of the armed forces had used its own radio alphabet, leading to difficulties in interbranch communication.

The U.S. Army used this alphabet in modified form, along with the British Army and Canadian Army from 1943 onward, with 'Sugar' replacing 'Sail'.

The JAN spelling alphabet was used to name Atlantic basin storms during hurricane season from 1947 to 1952, before being replaced with a new system of using female names.

Vestiges of the JAN spelling system remain in use in the U.S. Navy, in the form of Material Conditions of Readiness, used in damage control. Dog, William, X-Ray, Yoke, and Zebra all reference designations of fittings, hatches, or doors.^[22] The response 'Roger' for '· – ·' or 'R', to mean 'received', also derives from this alphabet.

The names Able to Fox were also widely used in the early days of hexadecimal digital encoding of text, for speaking the hexadecimal digits A to F (equivalent to decimal 10 to 15), although the written form was simply the capital letters A to F.

United Kingdom military spelling alphabets[edit]

British Army radiotelephony spelling alphabet[edit]

Royal Navy radiotelephony spelling alphabet[edit]

RAF radiotelephony spelling alphabet[edit]

The RAF radiotelephony spelling alphabet, sometimes referred to as the 'RAF Phonetic Alphabet', was used by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) to aid communication after the take-up of radio, especially to spell out aircraft identification letters, e.g. 'H for Harry', 'G for George', etc. Several alphabets were used, before being superseded by the adoption of the NATO/ICAO radiotelephony alphabet.

History[edit]

During World War I both the British Army and the Royal Navy had developed their own quite separate spelling alphabets. The Navy system was a full alphabet, starting: Apples, Butter, Charlie, Duff, Edward, but the RAF alphabet was based on that of the 'signalese' of the army signallers. This was not a full alphabet, but differentiated only the letters most frequently misunderstood: Ack (originally 'Ak'), Beer (or Bar), C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, eMma, N, O, Pip, Q, R, eSses, Toc, U, Vic, W, X, Y, Z.

By 1921, the RAF 'Telephony Spelling Alphabet' had been adopted by all three armed services, and was then made mandatory for UK civil aviation, as announced in Notice to Airmen Number 107.^[29]

In 1956, the NATO phonetic alphabet was adopted due to the RAF's wide commitments with NATO and worldwide sharing of civil aviation facilities.^[30]

^a The choice of Nuts following Monkey is probably from 'monkey nuts' (peanuts); likewise Orange and Pip can be similarly paired, as in 'orange pip'.
^b 'Vic' subsequently entered the English language as the standard 'Vee'-shaped flight pattern of three aircraft.

See also[edit]

• Spelling alphabet
• Toc H—example of signalese carry-over

References[edit]

1. ^'A Report by the Communications Electronics Coordination Section on COMMUNICATIONS (SIGNALS) PROCEDURES AND MESSAGE FORMS'(PDF).
2. ^'Globalization and Sea Power'. Isn.ethz.ch. Archived from the original on 17 May 2013. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
3. ^Communication instructions – GeneralArchived 22 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Allied Communications Publication ACP 121(H), Combined Communications-Electronics Board, April 2007, section 318
4. ^'North Atlantic Military Committee memorandum SGM-217-55'(PDF).
5. ^ ^abMyers, Capt., U.S.N., G. B.; Charles, Cdr., R.N.V.R., B. P. (1945-02-14). CCBP 3-2: Combined Radiotelephone (R/T) Procedure. Washington 25, D. C.: Combined Communications Board. pp. 1, 2.CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)
6. ^'FM 24-12,:Army Extract of Combined Operating Signals (CCBP 2-2)'(PDF).
7. ^Alcorn, John. 'Radiotelegraph and Radiotelephone Codes, Prowords And Abbreviations'(PDF).
8. ^'North Atlantic Military Committee SGM-217-55 memorandum'(PDF).
9. ^ ^abcdefg'North Atlantic Military Committee SGM-156-56 memorandum'(PDF).
10. ^'United States Army Signal Book, 1916'.
11. ^'FM 24-5 Basic Field Manual Signal Communication, 1939'.
12. ^'FM 24-5 Signal Communication 1942'.
13. ^'FM 24-12,:Army Extract of Combined Operating Signals (CCBP 2-2)'(PDF).
14. ^ ^ab'Boat-Book: United States Navy, 1908'.
15. ^'Popular Science, Nov 1917'.
16. ^Phonetic Alphabet and Signal Flags by Naval Historical Center (five phonetic alphabets: 1913, 1927, 1938, WWII, 1957–present)
17. ^Bullard, William H. G. (1913). United States Naval Radio Service Handbook of Regulations. United States Naval Radio Service.
18. ^'Communications Instructions 1928 Part II: RADIO'(PDF).
19. ^'FM 24-9 Combined United States-British Radiotelephone (R/T) Procedure)'. 1942.
20. ^JANAP 100, Joint U.S. Amphibious Communications. U.S. Department of War.
21. ^ ^ab'The Evolution and Rationale of the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) Word-Spelling Alphabet, July 1959'(PDF). Retrieved 2017-11-01.
22. ^'Archived copy'. Archived from the original on 2016-08-17. Retrieved 2016-07-10.CS1 maint: Archived copy as title (link)
23. ^Joint Army/Navy (JAN) phonetic alphabet from alt.usage.english (at the end)
24. ^U.S Army FM 24-5
25. ^ ^abc'British Phonetic Alphabets 1904-1926'.
26. ^Skiba, Richard. 'International Phonetic Alphabet'(PDF).
27. ^'PHONETIC ALPHABETS - HISTORIC, ENGLISH & OTHERS'.
28. ^ ^abcde'PHONETIC ALPHABETS IN THE BRITISH SERVICE'.
29. ^ ^ab'Notice to Airmen', Flight, Flightglobal.com, XIII (679): 862, 29 December 1921, retrieved 11 August 2014
30. ^ ^ab''Alfa Bravo' for R.A.F', Flight, Flightglobal.com, 69 (2451): 63, 13 January 1956, retrieved 11 August 2014
31. ^Keesing's Contemporary Archives, Volume 4, Part 2, 1942

External links[edit]

• Signal Flags and the Phonetic Alphabet—NavSource Naval History
• Visual Signaling, Signal Corps, United States Army, 1910—a book at the Internet Archive