The Little World

F/O Prune calling. ” Hey, Look At Me! Look What I Can Do! And No-One Knows It Was Me…! “

On the contrary, Prune. They might not see your face but the buzz numbers on the underside of your wings identify your aircraft – coming and going – and if you have been shooting up the hay ricks round your training base, the farmers will be in the CO’s office before you can taxi onto the hardstand. You signed the plane out and your name is on the sheet.

Or is that in the sheet? Well, something like that anyway…sheet will be involved.

Far be it from us to discourage youthful enthusiasm – once you have become fully trained and sent to an operational unit and find yourself in a circle of Messerschmitts, you may be as high spirited as you like. The Luftwaffe likes high spirits. But not now…

Which gives you the rationale of the entire thing in wartime. But isn’t it interesting that the RAF painted buzz codes under their operational planes in peacetime. I’ve just finished a Bristol Bulldog from a service squadron with them under there – in bold black on silver dope – readable whether the plane is approaching or receding. There are side codes as well, useful for the other members of the RAF…but the big codes underneath are there for tattle-telling – not organisation.

In some respects it might have been easier just to relax firearms regulations for the farmers surrounding an airfield – it would only have taken a few 12 gauge shotgun blasts into the bottoms of a few planes – and a few trainee pilots – to emphasise the need for proper behaviour in the air. For larger aircraft at greater heights the occasional Bofors round would do as much.