Pre-WW2 Mil Aircraft Role Markings: any further information?

[wilf_san]

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)

Here you go (at last!), a Spitfire with large spearhead outline shape (see caption): JetPhotos.Net Photo » K9942 United Kingdom - Royal Air Force (RAF) Supermarine Spitfire Mk.I by Jim Groom

(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

[ZH875]

Perhaps it never caught on, due to the squadrons having to pay 10 Guineas from Non-Public funds.

[wilf_san]

Ah, but that was payment just to obtain formal heraldic approval for the standard badge surround (crown/wreath/motto)....presumably this curious alternative shape, with the same design in the middle was included in the cost.

A direct picture of the Spitfire in question: it's only the oldest-surviving Spitfire in the world (I missed that relevance )



Relevant factor?

wilf_san

[Herod]

Wilf, that's no dove. It's a swift, as befits a fighter squadron. It also happens to be the squadron motto.

Herod (72 sqn 1968-70)

[wilf_san]

Apologies, my mistake on the ident- I should have remembered the bird was a swift (good to hear you're ex-72 Sqn, was that pre-Aldergrove?).

Do you have any thoughts on my puzzle re the role-shaped badges? Might 72 Sqn have been the only adopters of it?

The Cosford 'first Spit', as well as being the only aircraft I've seen with the mystery badge is also one of the few WW2-era RAF aircraft >without< a tailplane tricolour...because of the spear? (I admit I have seen some RAF Spitfires with large numbers on the tail instead of tricolours...)

wilf_san

[sedburgh]

Well there certainly are photographs of the fighter badges out there, for example, in the first book I checked, John Rawlings' Fighter Squadrons of the RAF, I found photographs of the following using the arrowhead fighter badges:

• 29 Sqn Demon
• 32 Sqn Gauntlet K5330
• 54 Sqn Gladiator K7920
• 56 Sqn Gladiator K7991
• 64 Sqn Demon formation (Also a picture of a post-war Meteor night-fighter using the same style of marking)
• 72 Sqn Spitfire I SD-H
• 74 Sqn Gauntlet K7817
• 80 Sqn Gauntlets & Gladiators
• 87 Sqn Gladiator

These are all except the Spitfire in silver doped finish.
Elsewhere I have found 1 Sqn Fury IIs and camouflaged 25 Sqn Blenheim Ifs

The RAF web site page on 64 Sqn has this profile of the Demon

I found this picture of a 17 Sqn Gauntlet (credited to Guy Black), via a Google search, at An airman's album

--
Philip Morten

[wilf_san]

Thank you, a very-comprehensive debunking of my suspicion that this role marking system hadn't been uptaken in practice: however, there are still some mysteries remaining. I'm not familiar with the Rawlings book (internet references date it to 1969?), I will attempt to get hold of a copy.

Clearly the system was actually used, and although it is something of an embarrasment to me that I'd never spotted it myself, I wonder how widely it was used in practice? Futher to this point (although the Meteor clearly disproves such an interpretation), I wonder if the system was limited in it's era of use mainly to Mr Baldwin's silver-doped RAF?

The use of the symbol on what is the first delivered operational Spitfire (cammed-up), and as you found, on an early Blenheim, makes me wonder whether this is a system that was withdrawn in the early days of WW2, perhaps to increase the level of national identification on operational aircraft? My gut impression (clearly wrong) was that tail tricolours existed before and during WW2, but clearly that's not totally correct. The excellent Demon you show here is a good example of the use of the badge, but it raises in me another puzzle I hadn't thought of before: why the redundancy of having the airframe number painted twice on the same perspective? But it certainly does show the spearhead symbol...

Further points: so although this spearhead symbol must have actually been marked on operational aircraft from the mid-1930s into (perhaps) 1940, did it disappear to be replaced with the large squadron tailfin digits (in the style of 19 Sqn? And *then* become tactically blurred, as the tricolour?

Another major puzzle is why you'd need to mark a fighter as being a fighter, or a bomber as a bomber (and on that point, were either of the other symbols ever used?)

My interpretation on this (and please correct me) would perhaps be that the system might have been a kind of international capability label, such that if Mr Chamberlain's RAF had been entertaining visiting delegations on behalf of Herr Hitler or Snr Mussolini, they could have been assured of force elements during arms inspections? Or did that not happen.

And if my deduction is true, was this some kind of League of Nations directive? That *was not* applied (literally/metaphorically) to all these Versailles-busting mailplanes sitting on German airstrips? The date of the announcement in 'Flight' is not far short of the first birthday of of Goering's Luftwaffe, 26 Feb, so that possibly ties-in.

(Presumably all BEF cover fighters at Dunkirk had lost their tail spearheads and squadron numbers?)

As well as my personal unfamiliarity with this role/'spearhead' badge system, none of the hundreds of Air Cadet readers of my original post over on Air Cadet Central had seen this before either (which gives me some limited cloud cover ). On the basis that an ignorance shared is an ignorance doubled, I'll post the eventual outcomes of this topic over on ACC.

Thanks for this

wilf_san

[Noyade]

Bombers=large circular bomb with fuse outline shape

G'day mate. I found this in Bruce Robertson's 1972 book, Bombing Colours...

[wilf_san]

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!

[FlightlessParrot]

I have no clue about the purpose of the markings, but the drawings of the Hawker bombers reminds us that a quick glance was not always enough to tell the role of an aircraft in the early '30s; not so easy to tell a Hart from a Fury as a Halifax from a Hurricane.

[wilf_san]

Originally Posted by FlightlessParrot

a quick glance was not always enough to tell the role of an aircraft in the early '30s

Amen to that- I have real problems in being able to accurately identify types/roles of 20s/30s biplanes, and am very glad I didn't have an operational responsibility to do so within that era.

There's something very similar in the shape and overall look of so many biplanes: the lack of taper on the wingtips, the flat dihedrals, the fixed undercart, the strutting. A gunner's nightmare in bad light...

On a related note, I've just realised I scored a double own-goal earlier, when I was referring to the Nazi re-roled mailplanes in the run-up to WW2. I called them 'Fokker triplanes', when of course I was meaning "trimotors"....Richthoffen's circus was a capable bunch of fliers, but not to the extent that they were able to hide (chocks-on for twenty years...oops!

wilf_san

[radar101]

At 56(R) Sqn we have a silver two-prop Hurricane presented to the sqn by Hawkers.

Nicely engraved on the tail is the fighter arrowhead with our phoenix/firebird inside. I can also confirm that our Gladiators had the same symbol on the tail in 1938.

radar101