The Little World

I have always been curious about anything connected to the decoration of aircraft. Look out your picture book of WWII aircraft and turn to the RAF section. Note the insignia applied to the average fighter or bomber:

a. Two upper wing roundels in red and blue – in some cases quite dark but quite large. Hard to see in the dark but definitely there.

b. Sometimes underwing roundels but often not. No sense advertising your presence as a night bomber but probably a good idea if you are a fighter to prevent your own AA gunners from peppering you. The underwingers are often red/white/blue.

c. Side roundels on the fuselage  – often outlined in yellow to make them obvious.

d. A fin flash of red/white/blue. Sometimes with a reduced white and sometimes with no white, but nearly every RAF plane has a flash of some sort.

This pattern was followed by Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, India, and Australia. With the planes used in the south Asia or South Pacific areas the red dot in the centre of the roundel was often omitted and sometimes the central circle was a light blue.

All very good and logical – and internationally legal under some Geneva convention or other. But there were anomalies:

a. Why did the RAF, RAAF, and RCAF sometimes paint secondary fin flashes on the inner faces of twin-tail aircraft like Lancasters or Liberators? Surely by the time someone was close enough to see internal fin flashes, they would have seen the outboard ones.

b. If downed airmen were instructed to give only name, rank, and serial number, why did they paint giant squadron codes on the sides of the aircraft? The Russians were as secretive as hell and got away with just a single number. They knew who they were and that was all that mattered.

On the wider subject of tail flashes, I note that the British Empire planes all bore them, the Germans put on the hakenkreuz, the French their own flash ( reverse British with brighter colours ), and even the Spanish and Vichy French made the tail distinctive. But the USAAF just painted yellow serial numbers for the most part – and the Navy got rid of the red/white stripes fast. Surely they would have been bound by some convention as well…

I am also puzzled that the USAAF and USN went to a system of one insignia on the upper port and lower starboard wing as well as the two fuselage ones. Again one wonders that they did not want the starboard upper or port under to show.