This from Platoon, “Redleg, Redleg … Ripper Bravo Two Actual. Fire mission. Grid six-four-niner … four-zero-two. Direction six-one-zero-zero. Dinks dug in bunkers. Danger close. Adjust fire, over …”
I hear the term “actual” often in war type movies. Seeing that the phonetic code for the letter A is “alpha”, what does “actual” mean?
Perhaps it means “now.” “acting at the present moment.”
Any unit commander, not just Marine.
Thanks, guys.
Ok, how about this one? From Apocalypse now: “And now here’s another blast from the past coming out to Big Cind, all alone in the mantle room out there with the First Battalion Thirty-fifth Infantry…”
Does “mantle room” mean anything in this case?
Speaking from a Naval perspective, we have different people on board a ship who have designations. Say I’m flying around the ship and I want to get a hold of, say, the surface warfare commander. I get on the radio and call his designation (e.g., and I’m making this up, “Victor Mike.”). What I get is a watchstander on the ship who’s manning the radio and helping manage the surface picture. He’ll roger up using Victor Mike. I could, however, hear on the radio “Victor Mike actual.” This would mean I’ve got the head honcho himself on the radio (the surface warfare commander). Say I saw a missile speeding inbound to the boat and wanted to talk very quickly to the head honcho instead of having the information get filtered through many levels of bureaucracy. I would say “Request Victor Mike actual.”
Not sure if the same applies to Army units.
It does.
In “Black Hawk Down” by Mark Bowden, there are several instances of the troops on the ground making radio calls back to the JOC. In some cases, the transcription is as such:
“Kilo Six One to Juliet Six Six, over.”
“Juliet Six Six Actual, go ahead Six One.”
Not to hijack the thread, but I’ve also noticed that, in calls like this, the commanders have the last number in their callsign as “six”. Kilo Six One in the above example would be, say, Sergeant Eversman, chalk lead, while Kilo Six Six would be the LT on the ground that has overall command of all chalks. Juliet Six Six would be the general back at JOC.
Likewise, in the Clancy-verse, “Rainbow Six” is John Clark, commander of the Rainbow group.
Am I imagining things, or is that “Six” designation usually held for commanders?
The other tribes, also. Adama always identifies himself as “Galactica Actual.” 
Alternately, SUNRAY is an official designator (“Appointment Title”) for the local Commanding Officer. In military (or at least Army) radio procedure, one can request direct contact with specific individuals using the proword FETCH, as in “FETCH SUNRAY” (i.e. let me speak to the local Commanding Officer directory). MOONBEAM is the Chief of Staff or Executive Officer. Other designations exist and are useful when you have a fast technical question. I got fetched as Bluebell a few times, by people who couldn’t figure out how to restart their generators.
“TWO-CHARLIE, BLUEBELL speaking. Turn the little switch thing to ON. Over.”
7= Highest Enlisted Person
6= Highest Officer
5= Executive Officer
At the company level, the 7 is the First Sergeant, the 6 is the commander (a CPT), and the 5 is the XO, a LT.
At the battalion level, the 7 is the Sergeant Major, the 6 is the commander (a LTC) and the 5 is the XO, a MAJ.
At the Brigade level, the 7 is the Command Sergeant Major, the 6 is the commander (a COL) and the 5 is the… shit, I guess it would be the Deputy Commanding Officer, a LTC. Beats me, though.
So if I want to call bravo company commander on the radio, I ask for Bravo 6.
If I am looking for the battalion commander, I call for Panther 6.
Panther happens to be this unit’s… um I guess mascot, but that’s not really correct, just kinda like it’s nickname. In Korea, my battalion was the Crusaders. So Crusader 6 would be the battalion commander.
I’m sure glad I didn’t have to go to Iraq with a unit called the “Crusaders”, with CRUSADERS written on everything. Holy War indeed.