Get the latest tech news

An Illustrated Guide to Maritime Signal Flags

Rabbit Waves

A standardized alphabet was created (see below image), along with a spoken word form for each one, designed to set apart similar-sounding letters like B, V and D. Each letter/numeral was assigned a flag: Alfa : Al fah, Bravo : Brah voh, Charlie : Char Lee, Delta : Dell tah, Echo : Eck oh, Foxtrot : Foks trot, Golf, Hotel : Hoh tel, India : In dee ah, Juliet : Jee lee ett, Kilo : Key loh, Lima : Lee mah, Mike, November : Novem ber, Oscar : Oss cah, Papa: Pah pah, Quebec : Keh Beck, Romeo : Row me oh, Sierra : See air rah, Tango : Tan go, Uniform : Oo nee form, Victor : Vik tah, Whiskey : Wiss key, X-ray : Ecks ray, Yankee : Yang kee, Zulu : Zoo loo, 1st substitute, 2nd substitute, 3rd substitute, Answering penant or decimal point, 1 : Unaone : Oo nah wun, 2 : Bissotwo : Bee soh too, 3 : Terratree : Tay rah tree, 4 : Kartefour : Kar tay fower, 5 : Pantafive : Pan tah five, 6 : Soxisix : Sok see six, 7 : Setteseven : Say tay seven, 8 : Oktoeight : Ok toh ait, 9 : Novenine : No vay niner, 0 : Nadazero : Nah dah zay roh One practical use of the International Code of Signals(ICS) is that all of the messages are standardized and come in 9 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Spanish, Norwegian, Russian and Greek.

Get the Android app