Why Did US WWII Planes only have one star on top/bottom of wing?

Prior to WW II, the US also had national insignia on both the upper and lower surfaces of the left and right wings.

Research showed that pilots and gunners tended to use the two insignia as aiming point references and tended to aim at the centerpoint between the two insignia. Unfortunately, this point was usually the middle of the fuselage. To prevent this, one insignia was removed from the top and bottom of the wings.

Martin

In that case, wouldn't it have been wiser to tow the insignia some distance behind the plane? :o)

(kim)

Learn something new everyday - never knew that. A nice trick might have been to offset one of the insignia, shifting the center to one side. Just for grins I wonder what different sized insignia and orientation would have done to their aim.

WmB

Polish aircraft did have their insignia placed off center for this reason.

-- Stephen

Polacks had their insignia placed off center because the didn't have directions !

noddy

-snip-

The RAF experimented with such an arrangement with their Sopwith Salamander fighter in the immediate post-WWI era.

And the Polish Air Force actually adopted such a scheme for the asymetrical arrangement of the national insignia as standard for most aircraft types.

There's no evidence that it had any effect at all on their opponents' aerial gunnery.

Nor is there any evidence that the US arrangement of placing the national insignia on only one wing made the slightest difference either.

Significantly, none of the other major WW2 combatants followed either the Polish or the US arrangement - preferring to retain symetrical national insignia on both wings.

Cheers,

Some Polish aircraft did just that. The left insignia was located in the expected position and the right was erratically offset. I've also seen F4Fs in photos with two sizes of insignia on the wingtops.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

I really ought to read all the posts first before I chime in with the same info. Oh well.....

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

Bill:

You are probably referring to photos of Wildcats and SBDs on, I believe, the Enterprise taken early in W.W.II. It seems there had been a couple of nasty incidents of over enthusiastic pilots shooting at their own side so Halsey's people decided to throw away the specs and paint the U.S. Insignia as large as they could. Some of the pictures show that they didn't paint them exactly over the older small insignia and you can see the smaller insignia sort of peeking out from one side of the larger insignia. This apparently didn't completely solve the problem which was why they eventually did away with the red in the U.S. Insignia just before Midway. This could make for some interesting markings variations on the new Trumpeter 1/32 scale F4F-3 and SBD-2/3 kits.

Bill Shuey

Rather, I think this was the result of a change in the official directives concerning the size and placement of national insignia.

These photos all seem to date to January or February, 1942.

In February, 1941, the Navy directed that the national insignia was to be removed from the upper right and lower left wings.

In January of 1942, the Navy directed that the national insignia be restored to all four wing positions. The size and positioning of the insignia was altered as well.

I suspect what we're seeing in these photos are aircraft halfway in the transition process with the "new" insignia painted on the upper starboard wing while the "old" insignia on the port wing not yet "corrected" to conform to the new directive.

The change in the positioning of the insignia could explain the "peeking out" as well if the new sized and positioned insignia was painted on before the old one was painted out - though that would apply only to insignia on the port wing. If there are photos with insignia "peeking out" on the upper starboard wing, that would kinda wreck my theory.

Cheers,

I love unusual markings.

Long time ago I did (and still have) a Heller Bucker Bu 133 in Spanish markings. This particular aircraft had the black disk with white cross on the right upper surface of the top wing and two smaller black disks on the upper left wing. Under sde of the lower wing had a solid black disk on each side.

Some day I'm gong to get rid of the overly heavy rigging of the day and replace it with #1 monofiliment. For such a small model I did a lot of work on it. Cowling replaced with a vacuformed piece, thinner struts and the like. The Bucker and Jungmeister logos on the tail and below the cockpit were done by hand on decal stock. Black stripe done to the correct thickness, remove everything that isn't Bucker Jungmeister with a #11 blade tip. Came out great.

Tom

Bill Shatzer wrote:

That is one small model, Tom. I didn't bother rigging mine. I doubt I'd have had the patience.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

The early P-47's in Europe had two large insignias on the underside - probably to keep the british AAA gunners from shoting at them. Same reason the Typhoon had very clear markings.

Bill

It was pretty time consuming. I didn't have the trained spider that I use now :-)

Tom

Mad-Modeller wrote: