Allied military phonetic spelling alphabets

The Allied militaries – primarily the US and the UK – had their own radiotelephone spelling alphabets which had origins back to World War I and had evolved separately in the different services in the two countries.

The US and UK began to coordinate calling alphabets by the military during World War II and by 1943 they had settled on a streamline communications that became known as the CCB.

Both nations had previous independently developed alphabet naming system dating back to World War I.

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 navies of NATO, which adopted a modified form of the International Code of Signals.

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.

The US 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".

[22] The US 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.

Vestiges of the JAN spelling system remain in use in the US Navy, in the form of Material Conditions of Readiness, used in damage control.