With few exceptions, the hurricanes of the twentieth century went unnamed in the United States until 1951, although some were referred to in terms of place and date; for instance, the “New England Hurricane of 1938.” Unofficially, a few had names of people. In 1949, while President Truman was in Miami addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the first hurricane of the season was called “Harry,” and a little later a bigger one which the newsmen said had greater authority struck southern Florida and it was called “Hurricane Bess.” In sending out advices and warnings of West Indian storms, it was not considered necessary to have names, as it was seldom that more than one was in existence at the same time. In 1944, when aircraft reconnaissance began, it became customary to get reports by radio-telephone and voice was used increasingly in other ways by the hurricane hunters. But this gave no particular trouble until September, 1950, when there were three hurricanes in progress at the same time. Two were in the Atlantic, one north of Bermuda and the other north of Puerto Rico. The third appeared in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. When aircraft were dispatched into these storms and began reporting, there was increasing confusion. Other communications and public advices became mixed and there was much uncertainty as to which storm was meant. Use of letters of the alphabet to identify them was no help, for letters B, C, D, E, and G sound much alike by radio-telephone; also A, J, and H. Numbers were no better because weather reports are sent by numbers and the advisories issued on each storm are numbered, so that the number 3 could be the number of the storm, the number of the advice, an element of the weather, the hour, etc. The agencies involved in weather and communications in connection with hurricanes met early in 1951 and decided to identify storms by the phonetic alphabet, which gave Able for A, Baker for B, Charlie for C, etc., in accordance with the following table: Able Baker Charlie Dog Easy Fox George How Item Jig King Love Mike Nan Oboe Peter Queen Roger Sugar Tare Uncle Victor William Xray Yoke Zebra In the 1951 season, this worked very well in the communications and the public began to speak of hurricanes by these names. At the start of the 1952 season, the agencies began to use the same list of names, starting with Able for the first storm, but soon ran into difficulty. A new international alphabet had been introduced as follows: Alfa Bravo Coca Delta Echo Foxtrot Golf Hotel India Joliet Kilo Lima Metro Nectar Oscar Papa Quebec Romeo Sierra Tango Union Victor Whiskey Extra Yankee Zulu