Nato Naming
Also see NATO reporting name
NATO assigned its own reporting names to Soviet ships. This was because the official Soviet designation was unknown.
- Initially surface ship classes were named after the place where they were first identified, e.g. Kotlin, Poti etc. It soon became apparent that this convention would rapidly become obsolete as the Soviet Union had only a limited number of naval bases and shipyards. A new convention based on vaguely Slavic sounding names beginning with the letter K for "korabl" ("warship" in Russian naval usage) was then used.
- Fast patrol and torpedo craft classes were named after the Russian name for insects e.g. Osa=wasp, The Soviets also actually named their missile boats after insects leading to confusion
- Minesweepers and small frigates were given diminutive first names e.g. Alyosha,Vanya, Petya
- Hovercraft were named after Russian words for birds e.g. Aist = Stork
- Submarine classes were given Phonetic alphabet names e.g. Delta, Alfa, Victor etc.
Read more about this topic: Russian Ship Naming Conventions
Famous quotes containing the word naming:
“The night is itself sleep
And what goes on in it, the naming of the wind,
Our notes to each other, always repeated, always the same.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)