Thursday, January 17, 2019 - 00:19
HMA Ship Pendant Numbers
Submitted by Stones on Mon, 07/05/2012 - 22:02
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Royal Australian Navy Ship's Pendant Numbers In WWI & WWII
Pendant Numbers", the number or character signal codes used in Commonwealth Navies and in the Royal Australian Navy to identify individual ships used by RAN Warships during WW1 & WW11. Many of these ships numbers changed during the course of their commission due to what squadrons they belonged to and what theatre they operated in. You will see below that more than a few ships changed their Pendant Number a number of times. So you will see some ships listed up to 3 times, dates of the changes are shown next to their name.
Pendant Numbers, pronounced 'pennant numbers', were used by the Royal Australian Navy and Commonwealth Navies as a means of identifying individual ships by signal hoist. Smaller vessels often had them painted-up on the hull, you can see these numbers clearly in the old photographs.
Flag Superior was the alphabetic 'Leading Character' that was many times part of the numbering scheme. The listing below shows pendant numbers applicable to wartime only.
During the First World War the R.A.N. possessed 63 Ships, 22 of these were requisitioned. During the period between the wars the number of Commissioned ships was significantly reduced and requisitioned vessels were handed back to their owners or sold off. The RAN lost only 2 Vessels during World War 1 and these were both Submarines, AE1 & AE2.
During WW2 many vessels were requisitioned by the Government for war service and, by the end of the war in 1945 the total number was 679.
During World War Two the RAN lost 38 Ships, of which 14 were combatants and 24 were requisitioned ships.
There were 39 more ships under construction in Australia when war ended in August 1945.
Highlighted/Underlined ships in the list below are links to pages in this website where these vessels are featured. |
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HMA SHIP PENDANT 1 AE1 |
HMA SHIP PENDANT DOO STUART |
HMA SHIP PENDANT D56 PLATYPUS |
