Here are some quick tips from the procedures I use:
1.- Determine wether merchant or warship
2.- Merchant: Determine if tanker or freighter. Tankers are clearly lower profile, not as tall as merchants and usually longer for the same tonnage
3.- Once the above is done, these things (In order) can help you narrowing an ID:
a) Number of masts
b) Composite (One command bridge and funnel in one piece) or split (Command bridge is separated from the funnel) superstructure
c) Funnel width & size
d) Cranes in the masts or simply antennae
The real ONI208J book had all merchants indexed with prefixes, as someone posted long ago in the mods forum (Sorry can't remember who was):
Quote:
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All merchant ships In the ONI 208-J bppks are facing LEFT. This is not arbitrary. the convention to sort ships had to do with: their engine (stack) position (mid or aft); superstructure layout (passenger, composite, split); bow and stern shaps and general conformation; finally, they coded the masts, kingposts, and funnels (M, K, F). This was deon from front to back, and for ease of use they put the bows left. The book was then sorted using those forulas as primary headers.
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So the officer at the scope simply called in order the letter representative for what he was seeing from front to back of the ship, and that helped the tracking party seek in the index of the book.
Hope that helps
