This is also a most impressive indication that the role indication marker system, as published in 'Flight', did actually happen in practice. Well found, thank you very much!
My gut feeling on this is that it must have been intended for compliance reasons. To me the only way in which a bomber would not *be* a bomber (or a fighter a fighter etc) would be if it were being used for training or other re-roled/cross-roled purpose. This could have provided a level of utility for the badges, I suppose, in the case of fighter-bombers: but then that logic falls apart, because such aircraft would then have been marked with two symbols.
Any of my reading from the era is making me inclined towards expecting this to have been an international requirement for the puposes of arms control monitoring. The timing for that conclusion seems right, and having read through some of the *excellent* League of Nations digitised archives held by some US universities, I might stumble across a directive (the LoN archives in Geneva appear to be down)
There is another more direct answer for this, I suppose, and that would be looking for the Air Council/(Air Ministry? too early?) order that covered military aircraft marking regulations, or to locate the appropriate AP. If only I could spend a weeend at Kew. On consideration, that's surely got to be the Rosetta Stone of such matters? Or was there no one single AP covering marking standards?
Thanks ongoing to all
wilf_san
ps Interested to see an SR/AAF Sqn listed, 502, as being compliant with the role indicator marking system. As an ex-Oggie I've seen many pictures of AAF aircraft of the era. None ever had these markings on them.
pps Just remembered about the post-war Meteor picture mentioned with a spearhead. Aside from the wonderful squadron fuselage 'surroundals' that everyone's familiar with from the 50s, again, I've never seen these markings on (any) later aircraft!