Signalman 1 & C - Historic Naval Ships Association

Figure 13-10.—Position of the horizontal stabilizer.Ship identification requires the same type ofinstruction as for aircraft identification. It is possiblehere to place more emphasis on on-the-job training,because wide variations in ship types are encounteredin normal operations on the high seas.Figure 13-11.—Helo recognition featuresinstalled IFF (identification friend or foe) system,which can be used to interrogate aircraft long beforethe aircraft is in visual range. Exact names anddesignations of aircraft not only may be hard to get butalso may prove unimportant. Personnel should betaught to distinguish between the various classes ofaircraft: bombers, fighters, transports, and so forth.SHIP IDENTIFICATIONLEARNING OBJECTIVE: Explain theprocedures for identifying naval ships,including combatants, auxiliaries, andamphibious ships.Recognizing ships at sea is as important asrecognizing airborne aircraft. Since surface vesselstravel in two dimensions and are slower than aircraft,they are much easier to identify visually. Shipsnormally should be identified while they are stilldistant enough to present only a silhouette to theobserver. The type/classes of ships should bedetermined from their silhouette long before their hullnumbers or names can be distinguished. The firstdetermination to be made is whether the vessel is anaval or merchant ship.In general, naval ships do not appear as bulky asmerchant ships. The naval ships have flowing linesand usually have less deckhouse and superstructure.Virtually all maritime powers paint their naval shipssome shade of gray or blue-gray that blends easily withthe ocean background. When close enough for colorsto be distinguishable, merchant ships can easily beidentified because they are painted in a variety ofcolors. During peacetime another indication ofnaval-merchant character of a vessel is the presence ofvisible weapons. The absence of guns may have littlesignificance, but their presence almost certainlyindicates a naval vessel. Merchant ship identificationwill be covered later in this chapter.13-5