Talk:Red Squadron (RDM)/Archive 1

I think this should be either deleted or merged, because Pegasus just used that terminology all the time: in the episode "Pegasus" they referred to "Blue team" and "Red team", etc. I think that these are *temporary* designations, like during the Battle of theb Tylium Asteroid, Galactica referred to "Strike Group 1" and Strike Group 2", but these were not permanent names. **I myself am confused by this. However, my two cents, I myself THINK that they're just temporary designations. --The Merovingian 03:30, 18 February 2006 (EST)

Actually, it may be a more permanent group than just a "strike team". Remember that Galactica has only had a single squadron of able pilots until now. Pegasus appears to have several. --April Arcus 05:08, 18 February 2006 (EST)

Lets wait for more info. --The Merovingian 05:16, 18 February 2006 (EST)

I'm beginning to get the impression, 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", and explained as wireless terminology used in flight operations. -- Hawke 01:09, 21 February 2006 (EST)

Ok, old post, but I pretty much agree with it. I added this as possibility to all the color squadron pages already, and we really can't be 100% sure. With Blue Squadron, it would be possible that they got re-assigned, but Red Squadron is used in "The Captain's Hand" and "Exodus, Part II" for completely different groups. This further reinforces my belief, that these are wireless code names or callsigns assigned on an ad-hoc basis to tell different groups apart. Nothing more. This is similar to Raptor and Viper designations like Raptor 1 or even higher numbers which are not permanently assigned hull numbers. --Serenity 19:51, 13 September 2007 (CDT)

Dialogue from "A Day in the Life":

Lee Adama: " Doing touch and goes until every last one of you hits an okay three. Red and blue sections will go first, yellow and green will follow. Skids up in ten minutes."

Here, the colors are just randomly assigned to different groups. The same that probably happened in "The Captain's Hand". With a division of two it's red/blue, and when more are needed they use green and yellow too. About the only time I can see Blue and Red Squadrons as something more permanent is when Apollo refers to them in "The Son Also Rises" (but Blue is apparently a combined Raptor/Viper picket, and Red seems to address Raptor pilots too). Still, I'd like to change the "color squadron" articles to general information about when these designations are used. This would also involve deleting the Pegasus Viper squadrons category and editing Pegasus respectively. Unfortunately, by now this has been up so long - and been viewed a lot for such a small article - that many people probably go with the present version. --Serenity 19:38, 15 September 2007 (CDT)