Talk:Chalk (military)

Military history: North America / United States

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this belongs in the military slang list and possibly in wiktionary but not as a wikipedia article Paulmeisel 18:45, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any explanation of who the term came into use? Joekoz451 21:08, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- It came from the airborne units of the US army.
It isn't slang, but an actual term in current use. Chalk comes from the numbers chalked onto aircraft to help identify them for loading[1]. Today, army aviation continues to use it to denote aircraft order in multi-ship flights[2], e.g. the first aircraft is "Chalk 1", the second is "Chalk 2", etc.. Troops conducting helicopter air assault are organized into chalks for loading on that particular aircraft. However, large air assaults include multiple trips or lifts and chalk numbers do not change with subsequent lifts. In that regard, this article is mistaking the perspective of the unit being transported as the reason why the term is used. I do not know if the USAF also uses the term chalk, but the Army uses it for airborne operations and it definitely denotes groups larger than a platoon[3]. --Born2flie (talk) 21:44, 2 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Joint Publication 1-02 Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms Joint Publication 1-02 (As Amended Through April 2010)

chalk commander — (*) The commander of all troops embarked under one chalk number. See also chalk number; chalk troops.

chalk number — The number given to a complete load and to the transporting carrier. See also chalk commander; chalk troops. (JP 3-17)

chalk troops — (*) A load of troops defined by a particular chalk number. See also chalk commander; chalk number.

https://irp.fas.org/doddir/dod/jp1_02-april2010.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rodewrrior (talk • contribs) 20:03, 16 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Question[edit]

Is the following statment true? "Chalk was a Ranger code word used during Operation Restore Hope. The word means a platoon." --pevarnj ^(t/c/@) 22:01, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]