PAN

[radeng]

What is the derivation of PAN as the urgency signal? Mayday is pretty obvious: so is SECURITE used for nav warnings in the maritime service, but where did PAN come from?

[Douglas Spragg]

Try it in morse code .--. .- -.
That is my best guess

[Hand Solo]

Well my French is cr@p but I believe PAN derives from the French word for broken, whilst MAYDAY is derived from the french "m'aidez" which apparently means help, or something like that. Ask a Frenchman.

[cessnababe]

Well I always thought that it was short for "panique" ie the French for panic... or is that too simple?

[tom775257]

isn't it from the french 'en panne' or something along those lines, meaning I believe accident or broken...

[radeng]

I looked in the 1938 (!) edition of the 'Handbook for Wireless Operators' at the weekend. It appears that PAN was adopted at the 1932 Madrid International Radio Conference, if not before. Although the book was meant for marine wireless operators, it says that PAN is also used by aircraft on both voice and Morse, and when sent in Morse, should be done so carefully so that it doesn't come out as 'PP'. Yet the marine urgency signal on Morse was 'XXX'. Quite why the discrepancy, I don't know. I wouldn't have thought that there was a lot of R/T in 1930 in aviation - mainly W/T with a dedicated operator.

My very old French dictionary suggests 'en panne' as 'heaving to' or 'hove to', which hardly suggests urgency.

[tom775257]

from my dictionary:
panne = breakdown *[noun-feminine]