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Encyclopedia :
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NAT :
NATO phonetic alphabet |
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NATO phonetic alphabet
Alphabet and pronunciation radiotelephony phonetic alphabet and Morse code chart. The FAA uses the ICAO phonetic alphabet. Wherever the agencies (ICAO, ITU, FAA, ANSI) differ, each agency's preferred pronunciations or spellings are also given in the table. The ICAO and ITU, but not the FAA, give an alternate pronunciation for a couple of letter-words. The FAA gives different spellings for their pronunciations depending on the publication consulted. These are from the FAA Flight Services manual (§ 14.1.5) and the ATC manual (§ 2-4-16). ANSI gives English spellings, but does not give pronunciations or numbers. The ITU numbers are quite different from all other versions (and no stress is given). History and useDespite its common name, the alphabet doesn't seem to appear in any official North Atlantic Treaty Organization publication. It may have received the name NATO phonetic alphabet because it has been adopted by the military of each of NATO's major countries, and is thus used by them when engaged in NATO exercises. All of the words are recognizable by native English speakers because English must be used upon request for communication between an aircraft and a control tower whenever two nations are involved, regardless of their native languages. But it is only required internationally, not domestically, thus if both parties to a radio conversation are from the same country, then another phonetic alphabet of that nation's choice may be used. The first internationally recognized alphabet was adopted by the ITU in 1927. The experience gained with that alphabet resulted in several changes being made in 1932 by the ITU. The resulting alphabet was adopted by the International Commission for Air Navigation, the predecessor of the ICAO, and was used in civil aviation until World War II. It continued to be used by the international maritime service, probably until 1959:
In the official international version of the alphabet, the non-English spellings Alfa and Juliett are found. Alfa is spelled with an f for the benefit of native Spanish speakers because they will pronounce ph as if it were a p with a silent h—the English word alpha is alfa in Spanish. Juliett is spelled with a tt for the benefit of native French speakers because they will treat a single t as silent—the English word Juliet is Juliette in French, but the ICAO did not adopt the final e because it might be misunderstood by native Spanish speakers as indicative of a final syllable tuh. In English versions of the alphabet, one or both may revert to their standard English spelling. The alphabet is used to spell out parts of a message or call sign that are critical or otherwise hard to recognize during voice communication. For instance the message "proceed to map grid DH98" could be transmitted as "proceed to map grid Delta-Hotel-Niner-Eight" and a C-130 Hercules plane directly ahead might be described as a "Charlie One Three Zero in your twelve o'clock". Several letter codes and abbreviations using the phonetic alphabet have become well-known, such as Bravo Zulu (letter code BZ) for "well done", Checkpoint Charlie (Checkpoint C) in Berlin, and Zulu for Greenwich Mean Time or Coordinated Universal Time. In SWAT units Tango is used for terrorists, Sierra for a Sniper etc. VariantsAt some United States airports, the use of Delta for the letter D is avoided because it is also the callsign for Delta Air Lines. "Dixie" seems to be the most common substitute. In British police work the use of India has been replaced by "Indigo". Many unofficial phonetic alphabets are in use that are not based on a standard, but are based on words the transmitter can easily remember. Often, such ad-hoc phonetic alphabets are based on (mostly) men's names, such as Alan Bobby Charlie David Edward Frederick George Howard Isaac James Kevin Larry Michael Nicholas Oscar Peter Quincy Robert Stephen Trevor Ulysses Vincent William Xavier Yaakov Zebedee or on a mixture of names and other easily recognizable (and locally understandable) proper nouns such as U.S. states, local cities and towns, etc. Older phonetic alphabetsIn addition to the alphabets referred to above, numerous other phonetic alphabets have been used in the past.
The nickname "Charlie" used in the Vietnam War to refer to the North Vietnamese is derived from "Victor Charlie", the NATO phoneticism of the North Vietnamese Army's initials (VC, for Viet Cong). The rock band Wilco's 2002 album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, includes recordings of a numbers station speaking these words, believed to be a transmission of an alphanumeric cipher using this phonetic alphabet. The name of sports car manufacturer Alfa Romeo is sometimes believed to represent the initials AR in this system, although this is not supported by the company's official history. UTC (aka Greenwich Mean Time) is sometimes referred to as "Zulu" time, after the Z letter designation given to the GMT time zone. The call sign "Sierra Oscar" is frequently heard in the British TV serial The Bill. In the Simpsons episode "Separate Vocations", the license plate "EX-CON" was spelled in a parody of the phonetic alphabet as "Eggplant Xerxes Crybaby Overbite Narwhal". References
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