Hawke at 16:18, 21 February 2006

2006-02-21T16:18:19Z

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<font style="color: #bbccbb;">I'm beginning to get the impression,</font> through careful examination of this episode and previous episodes, that the use of colours — Red, Blue, Green, Yellow — correlates to wireless-com designations, and isn't a ''formal'' delineation between groups/squadrons. It would appear that ''Pegasus'', indeed all battlestars, have a pool of pilots that are assigned to flights. Those flights are ''per'' battlestar. Such that, ''Pegasus'' has a Red, a Blue, a Green, a Yellow. ''Galactica'' has a Red, a Blue, etc. (if a ship of her age has an equal capacity to ''Mercury''-class battlestars is not quite yet known). Heck, if battlestar ''Hector'' (completely arbitrary name) was to show up, the safe bet is that it too would have a Red, a Blue, a Green, and a Yellow. '''The colour-name is not unique.'''

Are there other clues? Yes. In this episode especially, Starbuck "assigns" section/squadron "leads" ''on the fly''. If these colour groups were actually ''formal'' entities, it would stand to reason they would have a formal internal structure, with their own squadron leader, and second, and so forth. Those positions would not be assigned by the overall group leader, nor defined in action. Instead, the overall group leader (Starbuck, in this example) would say, "Lima (arbitrary name), take '''''your''''' flight/squadron/unit that way... " instead of "Lima, take Green that way." Make sense?

Star Wars fell into this pitfall. It has been stated, numerous times, that Lucas modelled space combat after WWI and WWII air combat, with a great deal of cues taken from RAF terminology. The RAF does this ''exact'' thing, wherein they have a formal squadron (such as No. 85 Squadron) name on paper, but when in operations, they call them ''by colour'' on the radio, such as "Red flight" or "Gold squadron". This colour does not follow that squadron around, and on any given day, they could be a different colour, depending on the mission profile and the units involved.

In the case of BSG, here, I think that, for the sake of coordinated communication, they (Colonial staff) ''designate'' a group/squadron by colour, but when formality is concerned, the involved pilots are part of the greater whole — that being a pilot associated with ''Pegasus'', or ''Galactica'', or ''Hephaestus''.

If anything, this article could/should be merged or re-categorized into "terminology", <font style="color: #bbccbb;">and explained as wireless terminology used in flight operations.</font> -- [[User:Hawke|Hawke]] 11:18, 21 February 2006 (EST)

Talk:Blue Squadron (RDM)/Archive 1 - Revision history

Hawke at 16:18, 21 February 2006