Type text to spell it out, or paste code words to turn them back into letters.
Over a crackling radio, B, D, E, G, P, T and V all sound alike. The NATO phonetic alphabet replaces each letter with a word that can't be mistaken for another: Bravo, Delta, Echo, Golf, Papa, Tango, Victor. It's how pilots read out call signs, how police spell number plates, and how anyone on a bad phone line spells an email address.
The current list was settled in 1956 after linguists tested candidate words with speakers of English, French and Spanish, keeping the ones every group could hear and say. Its official name is the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet.
A message written as code words is easy to decode once you know the list. The trick is noticing it. Look for a sentence that's suspiciously full of words like Kilo, Lima, Hotel and Tango. Paste the words into the right-hand box. Unrecognised words give their first letter, which also reads older spelling alphabets (Able, Baker, Charlie…) and most homemade ones.
Those are the official ICAO spellings. Alfa avoids French speakers reading “ph” as F, and the double T in Juliett tells French speakers the final T isn't silent. The decoder accepts both spellings.
Its official name is the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet. It's used by aviation, the military and emergency services worldwide, and NATO is the name that stuck.
The tool spells digits as plain words. The decoder also reads the radio forms Tree, Fower, Fife and Niner.