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The glossary includes most of the principal Navy, marine Corps and Coast Guard abbreviations in use from to the end of Four particular categories have been given in great detail: vessel types, naval aircraft types, commissioned and enlisted personnel designations, and Fleet Post Office numbers.

The vessel types, while numerous, are clear cut. For aircraft, the nickname as well as the official designation is given, and the general meaning of the initials indicating function and manufacturer. The personnel designations were changed several times during the period, particularly for reserve officers; these are all included, with cross-referencing to avoid needless repetition. For purposes of security, the names of overseas stations and units were frequently omitted not only from envelope addresses but also from the contents; without the assistance of the list reproduced under "Navy Numbers," it would be difficult to identify the source of letters which simply had the printed headings "Naval District Headquarters, Navy No.

The general abbreviations fall into two major types. Some abbreviations received an official blessing and were incorporated in aviation, communications, personnel or technical lists or manuals; others were often improvised and might vary with the individual taste of the abbreviator.

Certain naval categories have been deliberately omitted, because of limited interest in comparison with the detail involved, or for reasons of security. One should consult pertinent bureau manuals, for instance, for the designations of their administrative subdivisions and their more specialized equipment. The long list of port markings for overseas freight shipments has likewise been left out, as have the designations of naval radio stations and plane-to-plane communication signals.

The "code names" for particular operations, conferences and places will be issued shortly in a separate list. Naval Code Words ]. Where the same abbreviation has more than one meaning, the several meanings have been arranged alphabetically. In addition to the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard abbreviations, it has seemed expedient to include, without any such pretense of completeness, certain items from other sources which are likely to be encountered in naval documents.

Numerous entries of that sort will be found included in the general alphabetically arrangement, particularly for the United States Army, certain other branches of the United States Government, and some foreign navies. The glossary has been prepared in the Office of Naval History, under the supervision of the Historian for Naval Administration. Dorothy E. Richard, USN. Naval History and Heritage Command.

The Sextant. Social Media. Toggle left navigation Nav. Toggle navigation Menu. Toggle navigation. Navy Installations Historic Former U. Navy Women in the U. Navy Hispanic Americans in the U. Navy Contributions of Native Americans to the U. Navy Department Library. Thanksgiving '22 Nov. I part I Building the Navy's Bases, vol. The idea to use Navajo for secure communications came from Philip Johnston, the son of a missionary to the Navajos and one of the few non-Navajos who spoke their language fluently.

Johnston, reared on the Navajo reservation, was a World War I veteran who knew of the military's search for a code that would withstand all attempts to decipher it. Johnston believed Navajo answered the military requirement for an undecipherable code because Navajo is an unwritten language of extreme complexity.

Its syntax and tonal qualities, not to mention dialects, make it unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training. It has no alphabet or symbols, and is spoken only on the Navajo lands of the American Southwest.

One estimate indicates that less than 30 non-Navajos, none of them Japanese, could understand the language at the outbreak of World War II. Vogel, the commanding general of Amphibious Corps, Pacific Fleet, and his staff to convince them of the Navajo language's value as code. Johnston staged tests under simulated combat conditions, demonstrating that Navajos could encode, transmit, and decode a three-line English message in 20 seconds.

Machines of the time required 30 minutes to perform the same job. In May , the first 29 Navajo recruits attended boot camp. They developed a dictionary and numerous words for military terms. The dictionary and all code words had to be memorized during training. Once a Navajo code talker completed his training, he was sent to a Marine unit deployed in the Pacific theater. The code talkers' primary job was to talk, transmitting information on tactics and troop movements, orders and other vital battlefield communications over telephones and radios.

They also acted as messengers, and performed general Marine duties. Praise for their skill, speed and accuracy accrued throughout the war. Those six sent and received over messages, all without error. The Japanese, who were skilled code breakers, remained baffled by the Navajo language. The Japanese chief of intelligence, Lieutenant General Seizo Arisue, said that while they were able to decipher the codes used by the U.

Army and Army Air Corps, they never cracked the code used by the Marines. The Navajo code talkers even stymied a Navajo soldier taken prisoner at Bataan. About 20 Navajos served in the U. Army in the Philippines. The Navajo soldier, forced to listen to the jumbled words of talker transmissions, said to a code talker after the war, "I never figured out what you guys who got me into all that trouble were saying.

In , there were about 50, Navajo tribe members. As of , about Navajos served as Marines. From to of those trained as code talkers; the rest served in other capacities. Navajo remained potentially valuable as code even after the war. For that reason, the code talkers, whose skill and courage saved both American lives and military engagements, only recently earned recognition from the Government and the public.

When a Navajo code talker received a message, what he heard was a string of seemingly unrelated Navajo words. The code talker first had to translate each Navajo word into its English equivalent. Then he used only the first letter of the English equivalent in spelling an English word. Thus, the Navajo words "wol-la-chee" ant , "be-la-sana" apple and "tse-nill" axe all stood for the letter "a. Most letters had more than one Navajo word representing them. Not all words had to be spelled out letter by letter.

The developers of the original code assigned Navajo words to represent about frequently used military terms that did not exist in the Navajo language. Several examples: "besh- lo" iron fish meant "submarine," "dah-he- tih-hi" hummingbird meant "fighter plane" and "debeh-li-zine" black street meant "squad. Long unrecognized because of the continued value of their language as a security classified code, the Navajo code talkers of World War II were honored for their contributions to defense on Sept.

Thirty-five code talkers, all veterans of the U. Marine Corps, attended the dedication of the Navajo code talker exhibit. The exhibit includes a display of photographs, equipment and the original code, along with an explanation of how the code worked.

The Navajo veterans and their families traveled to the ceremony from their homes on the Navajo Reservation, which includes parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Naval History and Heritage Command. Print Friendly. The Sextant. Social Media.

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