Formation bomber paint designs

I have never come across other nations using them. As mentioned, the RAF bombed at night, and while they did put up 1,000 bomber raids, they often had to scrap aircraft from anywhere they could find them. The lead ships seem to have been most common with B-24 units. I have only come across a couple of B-17's. As well as the large number of aircraft, one should also consider the how close the airfields were to each other. I come from Norfolk, where most of the B-24's were based, and I have done quite a bit of research into the airfields of that county and it ix not surprising that they needed these schemes. But I can't understand why the B-17's didn't. I know live in Suffolk and there are 3 former B-17 bases within 15 mins drive. If all those were launching at the same time, it would have been manic. I am also not aware of any other nation using them simply because they did not put such large numbers of aircraft in the same piece of sky at the same time.

EDITED

The RAF bombed a single city with 1000 planes in a single night on more than one occasion. Wikipedia shows the 8th Air Force doing the same during the day.

The night bombing campaign worked with pathfinders, a bomber stream and bomber lead aircraft, not formation flying as per the USAF during the day.

Sorry this is more of a 'point of information' to another answer and doesnt address the OPs question directly. I couldn't resist :D

I was hoping that by now some WW2 vet had spilled the beans in an article or interview.

The U.S. could launch massive day raids and needed something to organize everything.  You're talking about hundreds of aircraft arriving on target at the same time or slightly seperated.

I have never heard of anybody else using formation aircraft.  The British bombed at night and didn't put up the numbers the U.S. did, so would they even need a guide aircraft that they couldn't see?

 

As far as the invasion stripes designs went, I imagine that any reference to any kind of special markings was a tightly kept secret and only the agreed upon design would have survived for even a short time.  It's possible that once everyone who needed to know was told, the paperwork was destroyed.  Details were held in strictest secrecy and the markings were only applied at the last minute using anything they had on hand, paint brushes, mops, brooms and so on.  If you look at some of the pictures you can see they weren't the neatest paint job applied.