Photo: Revolution Studios(Getty Images)
We all know how inexplicably hard it is sometimes to explain to the fast food delivery guy where you live, and we’re sitting comfortably in our home, enjoying all the fruits of civilization. When bullets are whizzing away few inches from your head and bombs are exploding nearby, there is no time to repeat and explain what you say. Going “No, not Bark street, Park street! Where did you hear about a street called Bark at all?! Never mind… P as in… Patriots” would cause a world of hurt in war time. That’s the main reason why the armed forces use the military alphabet.
Logistically there are no organizations as coordinated as the military, especially the United States military. Everything is formulated and standardized in Uncle Sam’s war party, as even the slightest of errors can cause numerous casualties, therefore undoubtedly clear communication is key.
Military alphabet history
The first internationally recognized alphabet was adopted by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in 1927, and was firstly used by the civilian airline travel. Although that was not the first case that this type of spelling was used in any organization, combat ones included. In 1941 United States adopted the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet to be used by all branches of its military. These words are also used for naming military companies, that’s why in World War II you had Able, Baker, and Easy companies, while now they would be Alpha, Bravo, and Echo. The alphabet was known as Able Baker because of the first two words, or letters, depending on how you look at it.
In 1957 NATO adopted the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet that is in use now. Of course, after a lot of testing has been done on which words in the prior alphabets sounded similar and confused communicators.
World War II Military Alphabet
B = Baker
C = Charlie
D = Dog
E = Easy
F = Fox
G = George
H = How
I = Item
K = King
L = Love
M = Mike
N = Nan
O = Oboe
P = Peter
Q = Queen
R = Roger
T = Tare
U = Uncle
V = Victor
W = William
X = X-ray
Y = Yoke
Z = Zebra
Photo: PATRICK BAZ/AFP(Getty Images)
Broken down, the military phonetic alphabet is a list of words used to identify letters in a message transmitted by telephone, radio or encrypted messages. On the radio, spoken words are substituted for letters, so “Crave” in the current military phonetics would be “Charlie Romeo Alpha Victor Echo”.
The alphabet is also used to communicate to the command which phase of a mission has been successfully accomplished, so the first one would be “Alpha”, the second “Bravo” and so on. You’ll hear this in movies about special forces as they would usually say to the headquarters “Alpha secured” or something similar.
Current Military Alphabet List
B = Bravo
C = Charlie
D = Delta
E = Echo
F = Foxtrot
G= Golf
H = Hotel
I = India
K= Kilo
L = Lima
M = Mike
N = November
O = Oscar
P = Papa
Q = Quebec
R = Romeo
T = Tango
U = Uniform
V = Victor
W = Whiskey
X = X-Ray
Y = Yankee
Z = Zulu
The phonetics have been incorporated into the military world completely, so much so that it’s used in soldiers’ slang. Like calling a flashlight moonbeam wasn’t cool enough. Instead of saying a word that starts with a “C” for instance, soldiers just say “Charlie”, and the actual meaning is implied. So Charlie Foxtrot is “Clusterf**k”, Alpha Charlie represents ass chewing in the sense of getting verbally reprimanded, and Whiskey Tango stands for white trash. This was depicted perfectly in the HBO’s mini-series Generation Kill where you can often hear “Oscar Mike” implying that the company is on the move, and also a 40 mm grenade being called a 40 Mike-Mike.
Share some of your favorite military alphabet slang terms in the comments. That’s an order, those who don’t comply will be hunted down with a military drone.
