Talk:Pennant number

R for Aircraft carriers
What is the logic behind R for aircraft carriers? The other seems logically like Frigate, Patrol, Minesweeper, Auxiliary and so on. Necessary Evil 16:36, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * My completely unsourced guess is that you may have just answered your own question (with A being taken by Auxiliary). I'd love to see a real answer, though - and it points out that this article is completely unreferenced, thus I will tag it as such. Maralia 16:57, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't have the foggiest idea, but how about R for Runway? --130.225.204.58 19:35, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * According to the RN Museum it's completely random - it's not the only category which isn't "logical", albeit much the most high-profile. As has been said, both A and C were already taken. Other theories I've seen are that "aircraft carrier" has 5 "R"'s, and that if you couldn't use "A" as the auxiliaries had taken that, and you couldn't use "I" for the confusion with "1", then "R" was the next available letter of "aircraft carrier". But these smack of folk etymologies - I'd take the RN Museum's word for it. 82.31.18.156 (talk) 03:08, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the information 82.31.18.156. --Regards, Necessary Evil (talk) 16:06, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Tag & Assess 2008
Article reassessed and graded as start class. --dashiellx (talk) 20:24, 27 June 2008 (UTC) http://coupondia.blogspot.com/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.117.230.207 (talk) 02:31, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Identifying an individual ship
I recently saw a very brief shot in a video of a ship bearing the number 'U' 56 or 58 (it wasn't that clear). I came to this article hoping to discover the ship's identity. Finding out the 'U' was pretty straight forward (it was a sloop in WW II), but I was flummoxed by the number. Is this the right place to be or am I off the trail? Is a list of individual vessels required or would it be impractical? RASAM (talk) 12:15, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Coming late(!) to this but the general article is usually not the right place for lists of these kinds of thing. US hull numbers are pretty well catered for as redirects, but it's a lot spottier for other navies. But Google is your friend - in this case either HMS Enchantress (L56) or HMS Hart (U58), the former lacked a stern gun as she was built pre-WWII. Or there's the book I mention below.... Le Deluge (talk) 15:34, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Warlow book
As a heads-up, Ben Warlow who has just finished a new edition of Ships of the Royal Navy has another book due out at the end of May, Pendant Numbers of the Royal Navy: A Complete History of the Allocation of Pendant Numbers to Royal Navy Warships and Auxiliaries ISBN 978-1526793782 which looks like it will be the definitive reference for RN pen(d/n)ant numbers, and history suggests he will take a fairly generous view when it comes to extending coverage to Commonwealth navies. Le Deluge (talk) 10:49, 1 March 2021 (UTC)