{"id":2308,"date":"2024-04-14T18:59:30","date_gmt":"2024-04-15T01:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/?p=2308"},"modified":"2025-06-25T11:07:35","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T18:07:35","slug":"nautical-terminator-roger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/nautical-terminator\/nautical-terminator-roger\/","title":{"rendered":"Nautical Terminator – Roger"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tradewinds instructor Dan Seifers asked me the other day why we say \u201cRoger\u201d on the radio to confirm we\u2019ve received a message. Why Roger, and not Reginald, or for that matter, Hermione? <\/p>\n\n\n

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            If you go cruising you\u2019ll probably want to learn the\nphonetic alphabet so you can spell your boat name and perhaps your HAM call sign\nin a way that can be understood in foreign ports. I can still quickly rattle\noff \u201ckilo-golf-six-echo-uniform-delta,\u201d sometimes involuntarily at\ninappropriate moments. However, even if you memorize this way of spelling\nthings, you won\u2019t find any \u201cRoger\u201d among the Mikes, Juliets, and Charlies. But this\nwasn\u2019t always the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            “Roger” is a holdover from the phonetic\nalphabet used by the Royal Air Force and the US Air Force prior to 1956, at\nwhich time he was replaced by “Romeo” to represent the letter \u201cR.\u201d In\naddition to changing “Roger” to “Romeo,\u201d “Able” was\nreplaced by “Alpha,\u201d “Baker” was replaced by “Bravo,”\nand \u201cEasy\u201d was replaced by \u201cEcho.\u201d There were some additional changes due to fuzzy\ncomprehension by speakers of Texan, Bostonian, Bronxish, Liverpudlian, and other\nlanguages, until the alphabet was adopted internationally. The current phonetic\nalphabet with “Romeo” was adopted by the International Commission for\nAir Navigation in 1956, by the International Telecommunication Union in 1959,\nand then by the International Maritime Organization in 1965.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            During WWII, the phonetic “Roger” was used to\nindicate R for “Received” in radio usage. Apparently no one wished to\nchange it to “Romeo” after combat ended and the alphabet changed, with\nthe result that what we have today is a small tribute to the Second World War.\nSo when you say \u201cRoger,\u201d remember those heroes of Normandy and Okinawa, the Po\nValley, and the Ardennes Forest. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Tradewinds instructor Dan Seifers asked me the other day why we say \u201cRoger\u201d on the radio to confirm we\u2019ve received a message. Why Roger, and not Reginald, or for that matter, Hermione?             If you go cruising you\u2019ll probably want … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nautical-terminator"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2308"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3527,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2308\/revisions\/3527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}