Type a letter, a word, or a phrase above to see it spelled out with the NATO phonetic alphabet.
| Letter | NATO code word | French military spelling |
|---|---|---|
| A | Alpha | Alfa |
| B | Bravo | Bravo |
| C | Charlie | Charlie |
| D | Delta | Delta |
| E | Echo | Echo |
| F | Foxtrot | Foxtrot |
| G | Golf | Golf |
| H | Hotel | Hotel |
| I | India | India |
| J | Juliet | Juliett |
| K | Kilo | Kilo |
| L | Lima | Lima |
| M | Mike | Mike |
| N | November | November |
| O | Oscar | Oscar |
| P | Papa | Papa |
| Q | Quebec | Quebec |
| R | Romeo | Romeo |
| S | Sierra | Sierra |
| T | Tango | Tango |
| U | Uniform | Uniform |
| V | Victor | Victor |
| W | Whiskey | Whiskey |
| X | X-ray | X-ray |
| Y | Yankee | Yankee |
| Z | Zulu | Zulu |
| Digit | Code word |
|---|---|
| 0 | Zero |
| 1 | One |
| 2 | Two |
| 3 | Three |
| 4 | Four |
| 5 | Five |
| 6 | Six |
| 7 | Seven |
| 8 | Eight |
| 9 | Nine |
How the NATO phonetic alphabet is used in the UK
Civil Aviation Authority pilots and controllers, coastguard and lifeboat crews, and licensed radio amateurs registered with the RSGB all read out registration marks, callsigns, and grid references letter by letter using Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, since plain letters carry poorly over a weak radio signal or a bad phone line (B and D, M and N sound alike). Contact centre staff also use it to confirm a reference number or a name spelling out loud to a customer. French armed forces and civil security services use the same alphabet, officially spelled Alfa and Juliett rather than Alpha and Juliet on paper, so every NATO country reads out those two words the same way.
Full reference table
The tables above list all 26 letters with the NATO code word and the French military spelling side by side, plus the digits 0 to 9. Any letter that differs between the two spellings is highlighted.
Where this tool falls short
This tool covers the English NATO/ICAO alphabet and its French military spelling variant only. It does not include other national phonetic alphabets, such as the German Buchstabiertafel or the Spanish and Portuguese radio spelling alphabets used by their own police and civil aviation services, and it has no code word for accented letters.
Origin of the NATO phonetic alphabet
The current alphabet was agreed by NATO, the International Civil Aviation Organization, and the International Telecommunication Union in 1956, after tests on which words survived poor radio reception best and stayed distinct when read aloud by English, French, and Spanish speakers, the three languages used in the trials. Digits also got a special radio pronunciation to avoid mix-ups, three as "tree", four as "fower", five as "fife", and nine as "niner", so none of them get confused with each other or with similar-sounding words in other languages.