U S Wing Insignia?

money?

Why would you need two? If you are in a position to see the wings from top or bottom you could more than likely see both wings and if not, then you could see the fuselage. And why bother camoflauging the thing if you are going to paint targets on them? That's the thing I never understood. Oh, well...

The US insignia was changed several times during WWI, and each time was to make it easier to distinguish from the enemy.

At the start of the war we had the 6-position blue roundel with white star and red circle in the center. Our own guys in the heat of battle kept mistaking the red dot or a Japanese meatball and shooting at our own planes. So they dropped the red dot, but the big round 6-position insignia could still be mistaken for a meatball, and the friendly fire incidents continued.

So in the summer of 43 we added the two white bars with the red outline around the whole thing, completely changing the shape of the emblem, an removed it from two positions so it was only on the top and bottom of the wing once. This worked to an extent, but our guys still saw all that red and didn't wait for positive ID to shoot!

So finally the red border was turned to the same blue as the circle (which is why the white bars appear to go into the circle) in Sept 43, leaving red off entirely. That finally worked!

Red was not returned to the emblem until 1947, when the red center stripes were added to the bars, and we still stay with the 4-position arrangement.

A story I read somewhere suggested it was to throw off the aim of enemy pilots. With a cross or roundel on each wing, you picked the middle and opened up. With just one marking on top, the story said it was harder to pick an aiming point. Good of argument as any.

http://www.njahof.org/insignia.htm

Did this article awhile back for the Combat Flight Sim guys...

Jeff

Thank you for that link, Jeff. I've often wondered about that. But why the red stripe that appeared in the bars later? To represent the national flag?

I read somewhere that the US National Insigna was reduced to being on only four locations as a way to save time. Since in WWII the US needed these planes in the frontlines as quickly as possible. This saved time on the production lines (and a little bit of cost also). There were alot of planes being built and I am sure it saved time in the long run. And like mentioned above you can see the insignia from almost every direction by being on the 4 places.

I also heard it was another reason red was dropped from the insignia, was it required the painter to add another color. To relate to this just think of the time you save airbrushing a two color scheme compared to a three color scheme. Plus you had to let the previous coat dry which cost them even more time.

Time was also a factor on why many of the planes arrived in theater unpainted,altough this also made them slightly faster by reducing weight and drag.