history

alphabet

usage

The military alphabet is phonetically-based and uses different words to identify the various letters of the English alphabet. This practice enables a message to be transmitted by radio or telephone with less confusion between similar sounding letters (e.g. B and V), and to clarify communications during garbled transmissions.

An early version of the phonetic alphabet appeared in 1913 in The Bluejackets' Manual. Over the years, the words chosen to represent the letters of the alphabet have changed. During World War II, the US "able baker" military alphabet, as used by the Allied Forces, was the most common phonetic one in use.

The current military alphabet was developed after World War II, and through international agreement, words were chosen that were phonetically suitable and commonly used in as many languages as possible. This alphabet was adopted by NATO in 1956 and is often referred to as the NATO phonetic alphabet.