Author Topic: New identification for military vessels available  (Read 24510 times)

Offline foggy

  • Top Poster
  • *****
  • Posts: 6,284
    • View Profile
Re: New identification for military vessels available
« Reply #15 on: December 02, 2011, 09:48:56 PM »
I have to agree with Paul, if a vessel has an IMO number, why leave that out? Not only RFA vessels have IMO numbers, a lot of naval auxiliaries around the world are ex civilian vessels (especially US Military Sealift Command vessels, but there are a lot of other examples) and it is always intresting to track the career of such vessels, something that would be very difficult if IMO numbers were deleted. Why not keep both pennant and IMO?

BRGDS / foggy
......

Offline Kyle Stubbs

  • Top Poster
  • *****
  • Posts: 995
  • Something something Danger Zone.
    • View Profile
    • Puget Ships
Re: New identification for military vessels available
« Reply #16 on: December 03, 2011, 05:12:51 PM »
To elaborate on foggy's comment, many of the US auxiliaries and Sealift Command ships I've photographed have hull numbers that I've listed, but their IMO numbers link to photos of the vessels prior to their entry into military service. It would be a shame to lose such a link to illustrations of the vessel's history when viewing the current photo.
"Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often." -Mark Twain

Offline Paul Dashwood

  • Home away from home
  • ****
  • Posts: 221
    • View Profile
Re: New identification for military vessels available
« Reply #17 on: December 03, 2011, 07:53:05 PM »
Thanks Foggy, Kyle, for your back up- I feel quite strongly about this one. As well as losing the link to that vessel's prior or subsequent history and guises, the link to technical data and AIS ship tracking information is also lost. I do not see how having access to both these identifiers can be confusing for anyone- the site already displays and allows searches by additional identifiers such as MMSI, which to most people is meaningless- but hardly confusing. The addition of pennant number searches is a step forward and a good initiative, but why give with one hand and take away with another? They are not unique and their usefulness appears to be limited to European navies. For me, where an IMO number exists, because it is unique it should take precedence over pennant numbers- but we now have the ability to use both, so why administratively limit to one or the other?

Regards

Paul

Clydee

  • Guest
Re: New identification for military vessels available
« Reply #18 on: December 04, 2011, 06:40:39 AM »
Hi Paul, Kyle and Foggy

I agree that these are important issues.

Advanced Search shows we can use IMO, Pennant no, MMSI, and Call Sign as alternative keys for searching.  I hope we could use any of these to find an image that was uploaded with the data.

Ken has said the Pennant Number box was introduced to make it easy to be able to find the ship you are looking for and as you will know the number is mostly prominently displayed on the ship   However,  the display on the ship is not always the full Pennant number.  Often it does not include the alphabetic characters.  See the Chinese, United States, Australian and Japanese examples below.

Different Navies use a variety of formats for Pennant (or Pendant) number, and they are sometimes not easy to find on the web.  It would be less difficult for members, and give a consistent result, if the site required that the characters prominently displayed on the ship were used for our purposes.

I am surprised that data in the IMO box is added by program to the Title whereas we are asked to enter Pennant numbers in both the Pennant number box and the Title box.  Manually entering the same data twice is usually not considered good data input practice.  If the Pennant number box could be used as one of the Search options, then Pennant number would not be needed in the Title which could be limited to the Country designator and vessel name, as generally used.


PLAN MIANYANG FFG 525
http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/photo.php?lid=1183936

USS MCCAMPBELL DDG85
http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/photo.php?lid=1346714

HMAS DARWIN FFG04
http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/photo.php?lid=1446302

AGB 5003 SHIRASE
http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/photo.php?lid=1079501

Best regards
Clyde

Offline Paul Dashwood

  • Home away from home
  • ****
  • Posts: 221
    • View Profile
Re: New identification for military vessels available
« Reply #19 on: December 04, 2011, 11:49:12 AM »
Hi Clyde,
I agree with you re. putting pennant numbers in the title. Now that pennant numbers are a separate data field, this is unnecessary, potentially confusing and likely to lead to the incorrect formatting of titles as has been highlighted

Regards

Paul

Offline Damieen

  • Just popping in
  • Posts: 6
    • View Profile
Re: New identification for military vessels available
« Reply #20 on: August 28, 2012, 06:08:08 AM »
If you are seeking for information related with identification of military vessels you could actually depend on this forum. Plus you could also share your experiences as well.
.

 

SMF spam blocked by CleanTalk