USAAF Spitfire wing roundel/star

Well I never. Not been changed to ‘Freedom Cockades’ then?

Does Bush know about this?

Interminable terminology

Can’t help.

However, I’m puzzled by Mark12’s termanology… What’s a ‘cocarde’? French for ‘cockade’? Why izz monsuer using onglish elzeweare in eez post? “…the French play La Cocarde Tricolore (The Three-coloured Cockade).”

Puzzled… Though glad to gather it’s just a matter of time before the Americans fight France and Britain, or am I misreading this?

JDK,

The RAF have ‘Roundels’

The USAAF have ‘Cocardes’

That is the official US terminology for the ‘White Star in a Blue circle’ as used in the written works on this subject.

Mark

Can’t help.

However, I’m puzzled by Mark12’s termanology… What’s a ‘cocarde’? French for ‘cockade’? Why izz monsuer using onglish elzeweare in eez post? “…the French play La Cocarde Tricolore (The Three-coloured Cockade).”

…soon picked the traditional French cockade as the first national emblem on military aircraft. Later, other countries often took a cockade or a development of it as their own national emblem, painted on certain military airplanes:

* from the inside to the outside blue, white and red on the French military planes (those from the French navy have a black anchor drawn upon the cockade);
* from the inside to the outside red, white and blue on the British Royal Air Force planes. Strictly speaking this is not the British national cockade (for the traditional British cockade colour was plain black) but is the RAF roundel.
* from the inside to the outside green, white and red on the Italian military planes.
* The emblem on Japanese military aircraft, the hinomaru, was not a cockade as such, but comes from a different source. Nevertheless it was used as a cockade on civilian official’s cocked hats before World War II.

Countries which expected to fight France and Britain took some other emblem so they would be recognized by their own forces.
Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockade“

Puzzled… Though glad to gather it’s just a matter of time before the Americans fight France and Britain, or am I misreading this?

Mark, I don’t know if this is relevant or useful, but have you seen this photo?

Dave,

Yes I have thanks…and it is one of the reasons for my query. Best judgement says that the lower wing US ‘cocarde’ should be 30 inch diameter to which is added a 2 inch wide yellow outer, making the full o/diameter 34 inch. This to be positioned concentrically over the RAF underwing roundel of 32 inches. The cocarde in your image, crude though it is, is clearly larger than 34 inches.

Mark

Mark, I don’t know if this is relevant or useful, but have you seen this photo?

TempestNut,

Good call.

I have both the books and have been in continuous dialogue with Malcolm Laird, the owner and editor of Ventura Pubs, for some years. Malcolm has this past week given me his best judgement on the US wing cocardes

Without revealing the scheme, if you will bear with me, these two publications have been the prime source of information for the chosen livery.

Mark

I just knew you would have the books. I meet Malcolm back in 98 when I was last visiting Wellington and he seemed to be well connected and had a lot of interesting information about spitfires. 🙂

Ventura Publications

Mark12 I think your best resource that I know of are the 2 volumes by Ventura Publications of US Spitfires.

TempestNut,

Good call.

I have both the books and have been in continuous dialogue with Malcolm Laird, the owner and editor of Ventura Pubs, for some years. Malcolm has this past week given me his best judgement on the US wing cocardes

Without revealing the scheme, if you will bear with me, these two publications have been the prime source of information for the chosen livery.

Mark

Mark12 I think your best resource that I know of are the 2 volumes by Ventura Publications of US Spitfires. They cover ETO & MTO and cover the 31st FG and 52nd FG in some detail with some good colour photographs. For those that are easily confused the 52nd FG (2nd 4th & 5th fighter squadrons) operated in the UK before moving to the MTO and its aircraft carried the same codes as the 4th FG for the same reasons as I outlined above for the 31st FG (307th 308th & 309th fighter squadrons) .

When looking at the photos in these books it obvious that there were many variations in the size and style of the stars applied, and it looks to me that the early stars applied for Torch directly over the top of RAF roundels look very odd indeed.

It appears that once the Groups had established permanent bases that the US National insignia was reapplied using correct proportions, and it was probably at this time when one of the upper and lower stars was removed as was usual US practice. However this was not always the case and photo’s and illustrations show aircraft with stars and bars on both upper and lower wing positions. The 52nd FG also applied RAF fin flashes whilst the 31st generally did not, although there were many variations to this.

The yellow outline to the stars was for Torch and many US spits carried 3 inch yellow outlines and not 2 inch. Hope this helps

the 1st FG 71st FS arived at goxhill in 1942 with P-38’s and while the 94th FS went round the corner to kirton in lindsey. a bit of useless info goxhill was the first airbase handed to the usaaf and at the ceremony was dwight d eisenhower and high up members of raf and usaaf (can’t remember names brain like Sieve) and dure in the ceremony a rouge german plane dropped a bomb and hit close to the cross over points of the runways the bomb sank due to wet soil conditions and was left there untill after the war.

don’t worry about it. never seen “bloody” written so many times in a post.
good luck with your research

cheers

I missed the bloody ‘th’. Bloody 309 Sqdn weren’t around then. They were Poles in bloody Mustangs when they did appear. I sould be bloody shot. This is the bloody link I posted up near the top when I double checked after the first post..

http://www.31stfightergroup.com/31stReference/history/309th.html

So it’s still bloody High Ercall.

“The 309th Fighter Squadron was activated as part of the 31st Fighter Group at Baer Field, Fort Wayne, Indiana on Jan 30, 1942. Lt. Harrison R. Thyng was appointed the Squadron’s first Commanding Officer. On February 6 they moved to New Orleans Army Air Field and were equipped with P-40B Tomahawks for a short while before switching to P-39s. Transferred to the 8th Air force in mid May, they shipped for England in early June and established themselves at High Ercall, England on June 11, 1942. The Squadron was equipped with Spitfire Vbs and assigned the squadron code WZ. They familiarized themselves with their new Spitfires, training and learning RAF methods until August 1 when they moved to Westhampnett, near Tangmere, and became integrated with active RAF squadrons.”

Bloody Leffe Triple after a bloody day at bloody home.

(Oh, and I’m bloody sorry I was bloody rude to you Mustang500. I normally bloody behave on this forum).

not sure but did the 52nd & 31st FG’s operate spitfires in africa??

To put it bloody politely Snapper – the difficulty that people are having is that ‘309 Squadron’ implies RAF (no Group prefix) and 309 Sqdn, RAF did not operate Spitfires.

“i dont think the photo above was taken at goxhill”

It wasn’t. It was taken at Bloody High Ercall.

“the spitfire is in the codes of the 84thFS 78th FG (WZ)”

It isn’t. It’s in the codes of bloody 309 Sqdn.

“don’t know if photo was taken at duxford or not.”

It wasn’t. It was taken at bloody High Ercall.

What is difficult to understand here? That Spitfire was photographed at High Ercall. It was a 309 Sqdn Spitfire.

Or would you prefer me to ask the person who took it to confirm it? Seeing as he was posted to 309 Sqdn at High Ercall when they had Spitfires with bloody stars on it I can’t see the point.

bloody bloody oh i was bloody only bloody trying to bloody help

thank bloody you

and if you look at the bloody 78th FG aircraft there are bloody WZ 84th HL 83rd MX 82nd codes on the side

the spitfires roundels are yellow banded red or blue insignia and white star as i have a colour photo of one at goxhill outside a blister hanger wearing code C7 but as your atitude is like that i aint gona bother

thankyou

“i dont think the photo above was taken at goxhill”

It wasn’t. It was taken at Bloody High Ercall.

“the spitfire is in the codes of the 84thFS 78th FG (WZ)”

It isn’t. It’s in the codes of bloody 309 Sqdn.

“don’t know if photo was taken at duxford or not.”

It wasn’t. It was taken at bloody High Ercall.

What is difficult to understand here? That Spitfire was photographed at High Ercall. It was a 309 Sqdn Spitfire.

Or would you prefer me to ask the person who took it to confirm it? Seeing as he was posted to 309 Sqdn at High Ercall when they had Spitfires with bloody stars on it I can’t see the point.

i dont think the photo above was taken at goxhill the spitfire is in the codes of the 84thFS 78th FG (WZ) i notice that there are 3 blister hangers in the background goxhill had 4 all together and there was roads (horsegate field road to west) (ruard lane to north) (chapelfield road east) with hedges spliting the dispersals only 1 blister on the main airfield site. don’t know if photo was taken at duxford or not.

thanks

airfield plan showing i blister hanger on west side of main airfield site

Indeed, this is UK. The only Yank Spit pic I have in my archive you see.

Er well actually.

Snappers illustrative photograph is not the actual subject of the proposed scheme.

Please bear with me.

Mark

The picture seems to indicate that the RAF wing rondels have been overpainted and a smaller diameter US marking applied to the port wing. The is a discontinuity on the darker clolour colour at the aileron/wing hinge on the port side while on the starboard side there is a similar discontinuity and a roundish patch, as you would expect. The fuselage rondel also looks to have been repositioned rearwards and is maybe a little smaller than standard RAF size on a Spit V.

Its difficult to believe that a RAF scheme modified in the field (did any Spitfires leave the factory with US markings?) would include any re-positioning of the insignia. The stars would have surely been applied over the existing RAF roundels and, as only one wing of each surface was marked – with one side probably crudely filled in with (almost matching) camouflage paint.

In some cases concentric in other cases eccentric and at diameters various.

Thanks to all who have made an input.

Mark