I've been asking my comrades over on
Air Cadet Central about a potentially-rare military aircraft role marking system from the 1930s that was quite unfamiliar to me. There was a suggestion from my fellow forum member
oldegytte that I should try posting here on Prune. I have to admit I didn't know you had an aviation history and nostalgia section, having previously just made a couple of brief sorties into the Military Aircrew section.
So what I've uncovered appears to have been a national role designator symbol marker, planned to have been painted on all British military aircraft from around 1936 presumably until WW2, that I'd *never* seen on a single aircraft of the period, either in the flesh or in pictures.
Perhaps this is just something that throughout my lifetime I've just somehow missed, and it's been painted on lots of airframes. But I doubt it.
Therefore: is anyone here able to make comment on the system? Did it die out rapidly? Was it perhaps an international inter-war/Munich era aspiration, perhaps not rigourously applied the way it should have been, to Fokker triplanes etc?
The shape of this alternative squadron badge outline shape was:
Fighters etc= large spearhead outline shape
Bombers=large circular bomb with fuse outline shape
Recce/Transport=large six-pointed star outline shape
I couldn't see these marked on aircraft in any pictures from that or later decades...until my forum member
Hendon Chipmunk came up trumps....(click the link)
(it's a link to an excellent picture of a 72 Sqn Spitfire...which is doubly-interesting, because that's clearly not a
pre-WW2 type)
The reference within 'Flight' that started me off on this is copied below
So it is
exactly what is says: the centre content of the standard RAF squadron badge operating the type (so 72 Sqn's dove...), but in a
differently-shaped surround, to visually indicate the aircraft role from a distance.
Did it happen, as a national/international role designator system, but so rarely that I've
never seen it, in
any aircraft book/picture/film/museum/collection?
All comments welcome!
wilf_san