Warbird Information Exchange

The LIFE folks bring us a poss base line of one of many variations of the U.S insignia on WW II aircraft. In this case the Douglas A-24 Dauntless showing a simple white 5 star on a dark blue background on the side fuselage & bottom of the L/wing. The AAF, Navy & USMC also had diff variations through the years!

Those are SBD's (they look to be -3's) not the Army A-24 version. Right after Pearl Harbor U.S. aircraft (mostly Navy) in the Pacific sprouted huge balls and stars on tops and bottoms of both wings and fuselages as big as they could make them and quickly eliminated the red center so as not to be mistaken at a glance like in the photo, as being Japanese, prewar squadron designators were painted over so the enemy couldn't figure out what carrier the fighters and dive bombers were from as in some cases were the individual airplane numbers, it was sort of a free for all early on.
The ANZAC aircraft in the Pacific went to a modified roundel that had no red on it for the same reason, and in some cases added big white flanking bars to their roundels later on. As far as I know, the Army simply painted over the red center ball and didn't enlarge them as a normal course of action but it was some time before Army aircraft showed up in great numbers in the combat areas of the Pacific.

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

[quote="zorro7"]The AAF, Navy & USMC also had diff variations through the years!

Were there any variations of the insignia that were strictly related to a particular branch of the military? I guess maybe the elimination of the blue on dark sea blue Navy and Marine birds might qualify. Other than that?

CV

Good day!

Yes they were!! Including two diff Bunos on the same aircraft!!
Photo via AEC.

p.s Would love to know the Buno of this VC-3 F4U c, Korea 1950s.

I don't think there were any "official" service-specific versions of the basic National Insignia. It started out as mentioned above..first the red "meatball" was deleted in 1942. In the spring of '43 the white bars were added, with a red border around the whole thing (my personal favorite.) Many Army, Navy and Marine units in the Pacific deleted the red border, as any red was considered too easy to confuse with the Japanese "meatball." In the fall of '43 the red border was changed to blue. When the Navy went to overall dark sea blue paint schemes, some manufacturers were given permission to delete the blue portion of the insignia to save time and paint. The red stripe was added to the bar in 1947, when the USAF became a separate service.

The fact that the "star and bar" insignia has an actual border is often missed by restorers, moviemakers and model decal companies. This is the correctly proportioned inignia..



And the way it's often incorrectly rendered. I suppose it's a rather silly nitpick, but it always sticks out like a sore thumb to me.



The Army, Navy and Coast Guard did each have their own versions of rudder stripes. The Army and Navy eliminated them early in the war, but I think the Coast Guard kept theirs throughout the war.

SN

Steve:

Interesting subject & data! Tks!

I found this B/W showing the original insignia c.1940s on a Navy aircraft. A dark blue circle, with a 5 pt white star & the famous red dot! Photo via Navy Archives

Looks like a Brewster F2A Buffalo in a wind tunnel, with what appears to be a 20mm cannon mounted in the wing. Interesting to see that the aileron has been taped over for the tests.

SN