[Milsurplus] PT Boat Callsigns

[Howard Holden]

The current phonetic for N is November, been that way since at least the 
60s.

And the four letter N call signs for ships were used in unclassified in the 
clear CW communications through the 70s and 80s, both by regular US Navy 
ships and USNS (civilian manned Navy ships). Onboard commands (think 
ComSixthFlt, or ComDesRon XX) had non N four letter call signs for CW. For 
example, ComSixthFlt was YQJQ. I did CW comms in the Navy for three years in 
the 60s, and besides the many Navy ships still using CW at times, I also 
took CW traffic from ComSixthFlt on numerous occasions. Offline encrypted 
classified traffic - the five letter group kind -  from ships or commands 
used an indefinite two letter N call sign, assigned at random at the time of 
transmission.

Howie WB2AWQ

-----Original Message----- 
From: Mike Morrow
Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2015 4:11 PM
To: milsurplus at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] PT Boat Callsigns

Sam wrote:

> http://www.navsource.org/archives/12/05190.htm
>
> They all have Nan callsigns.

More directly, they have four-character alphabetic call signs beginnig with 
N.

Almost all USN vessels have, for more than 80 years.  Like:
NUBC - USS Daniel Boone SSBN-629 (my sub)
NBQK - USS Intrepid CVS-11 (my ship)
NWFM - USS Sawfish SS-276 (my dad's sub in 1944)

Even oddities:
NWBE - USS Los Alamos AFDB-7 (floating dry dock)
NECZ - YT-9 (harbor tug built in 1903)
NEPR - USS Constellation IX-20 (sailing ship)
NAPJ - USS Constitution IX-21 (sailing ship)

NERM - USS Los Angeles ZR-3 (rigid airship)  Civil aircraft of that
       era had five-character alphabetic calls starting with K.

So just about anything USN had one of the 17576 possible Nxxx calls.

But they were almost never used...certainly not for voice communications.
It's a waste for the navsource.org website to display any phonetic
alphabet representation for a ship's call letters be it in the WWII system
(N = nan) or current (N = nancy).

On the extremely rare occasions that I as OOD communicated by voice from
my SSBN to another unit, tactical call signs were used.  Our call NUBC was
without significance...it was never used or cited.

I'm certain the same was true of PT boats in WWII.

Mike / KK5F
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