New identification for military vessels available

[Henrik Soderberg]

Hi all,

As you upload, you can now enter the pennant number of vessels that has one.

This is used for military vessels mainly from Europe. It will be used to be able to search/find unique military vessels that does not have an IMO number.

The number is not shown in public yet, as we're working on standards for it. It will be included as a search option in the new search engine we're about to release this month.

Regards,
Henrik

[Henrik Soderberg]

It's now shown. If a pennant number exists - it's shown beneath the IMO number in the photo details box on the photo page.

Regards,
Henrik

[b47b56]

Is it the same as hull number?

[b47b56]

Thank you, Ken!

I understood that Pennant Numbers are used by UK and some NATO fleets.
But there are still two types (which I found) of military identification numbers:
Hull Numbers (for USA and some other countries) and Tactical Numbers (Russia and some countries).

A big part of  my military photos connected with Russian Black Sea Fleet and sometimes foreign military ships make visits into our port.

So, the question is:
How can I classify ships with Hull Numbers and Tactical Numbers? So, towards to another military fleets it will be not so fair to use only Pennant Numbers.

Regards, Yevgeniy.

[Chris Howell]

I have started putting these in for my postings.

Is this correct ?

HMNZS SOUTHLAND

Pennant number F-104 or should it be 104, or F104 ?

Please advise.

My opinion is this is a real benefit to the site and all members should review their postings of warships, so it will be much easier to find for example all the photos of HMS Norfolk.

[Clydee]

Hi Chris, and all

From the Support tab on the Home page, go to the Category Site Standard for Military Ships, section 3 Required Information.

http://www.shipspotting.com/support/faq.php?category=Military%20ships#158

There is a long standing request for an identification box where pennant numbers for military ships, and other searchable IDs, could be placed for vessels without IMO

Best regards
Clyde

[Henrik Soderberg]

Hi,

Thanks for the input everyone.

Currently most have put the pennant number in the title. It should be after the ship name, rather than before. Ken was working on this as we decided it's time to make it searchable as well. The F you mention seems like it belongs to the pennant number. We have not decided yet on the standards - like if it should be a space after the F or not - that's for others to decide than me.

First of all I have to say that I'm not an expert on global military vessel classification, and the wikipedia pages are (as to my knowledge) not complete/correct enough. I have no idea what is missing.

To answer some questions asked here - No - the HSC is *not* a pennant number, and should still be added to the description field, or possible title. Those of you who uploads military vessels should know already where to put it.

We do plan to add several more fields to be able to identify unique vessels. We're doing this in parallell with the new search engine.

It is likely we add HSC - Hull numbers, which are (to my knowledge) not unique for each vessel. It's used mainly of the US and Canada, with some slight differences.

For the other military vessels (non-western Europe/North america) we still have some research to do and some standards to follow. Stand by for those, and note it in the description field. That way we can all help populating the numbers into the correct fields once we're finished.

I'm certain that all of this work will help out a lot sorting out photos and vessels, to everyone's satisfaction. Just some hard work needed.

Regards,
Henrik

[E. Vroom]

Hi,

good thing to bring more structure to the pennant number. Now one step up. Where the letter in the pennant number stand for a certain category of ships, wouldn't it be wise to have a a separate field for the letter and one for the number. This way it then would be possible that once the letter is put in the letter field, autamatically the photo will be classified to the right category?

Another request of mine of old date. Could the same be made for the inland vessel "EU number/ENI number"?

[E. Vroom]

P.S.

How about for the fishing vessels prefixes?

[E. Vroom]

Thanks Ken,

I

[Henrik Soderberg]

LOL. Good reply, Ken.

We all really want all kinds of classification and identification to work out. We do want to take this step by step, and not all at once. There are numerous problems, exceptions, interferences, missing pieces and many various ways to structure the information. We need to learn it all the hard way, and that's easiest made one by one. Especially since we need to learn the various standards, set our own standards for how it should be used (to work out with the site structure and for searching to make sense and not be too difficult). Any feedback on this that can help us in the right direction is appreciated. A proper structure here has one goal only - that is to make it easier to sort out photos and data for our members and visitors.

Regards,
Henrik

[Chris Howell]

Thanks Ken /Henrik

I will go through in time an adjust my naval scans to prefix,name,pennant and number in the title.

[Allan RO]

Hi there

could the same system be applied to fishing vessels, with their fishing numbers

Allan

[Robert J Smith]

Now that we have a box for the Pennant Number when uploading Military Vessels would you please keep to a standard format of Alphanumerical with no Spaces and enter it as a suffix at all times for example HMS WESTMINSTER F237 and not as can be seen in some uploads (F237) - F-237   
or reverse order F237 HMS WESTMINSTER and also to keep to upper case letters (Capital)if possible.

It would be helpful if this was done, the Military Vessels are in the process of being tidied up and updated to this format so this would be appreciated.

Kind regards
Ken

Come on people, help the admins on this one, there's still a lot of military vessels being uploaded in the wrong format.

Cheers

Bob

[Paul Dashwood]

Hi all,
In the UK, ships of the Royal Fleet Auxillary are civilian manned and have IMO numbers as well as pennant numbers. Is it possible that over zealous admins could please leave the IMO numbers intact when editing these naval auxiliaries? There is obviously provision for both IMO and pennant numbers, so why remove the IMO number when editing these photos to the new format? Two photos of mine of RFA Argus (A135, IMO 7822550) that I have found so far have had their IMO numbers deleted when I had originally entered that info.
Thanks

Paul