Yellow leading Edges On British WW2 Aircraft

Supermarine305…I really must pay attention! Thanks.

A split second is life and death in combat..

Seafuryfan: Post #3 might be what you are after.

Has anyone read an account of a pilot seeing the yellow edges of another aircraft while fighting, to help with his decision making? I haven’t. Frankly I’d be amazed in the heat of combat if it featured at all.

The Japanese Army AF did use Yellow leading edges for much the same reason, but thicker and inboard. Oddly enough so did the FAA for the invasion of Madagascar, but the normal RAF ones were thinner and outboard.

There was a report of Bf109s with D-Day stripes, but this turned out to be Geschwader that had black-white-black Reich Defence bands. The Luftwaffe didn’t adopt Allied markings such as the yellow leading edges because it would otherwise lead to blue-on-blue. If the RAF wished to distinguish their aircraft, so much the better for the Luftwaffe too.

I found a wreck of a ki43 in the pacific many years ago that had a yellow leading edge on the wings.

Maybe a daft question, but did the Luftwaffe ever adopt yellow lines as a means of getting closer to allied fighters?

Perhaps a bit ungentlemanly, but I recall that the Nazis quickly copied some sort of (pink?) indicator flares dropped before bombing raids, to encourage the RAF to bomb the wrong area. It think might have been mentioned in a biography of Guy Gibson? I’ve also read about a shot up B17 lowering the undercarriage as a symbol of defeat (a standard practice?), only to robustly open fire on the Luftwaffe pilots that went alongside to check.

I thought that it was mainly for identification head-to-head. The mirror argument works too, but only if you are being shot at from directly behind. It works for any angle.

Would that have been his bill?:)

If it had a yellow nose….DUCK!!!!!

That is brilliant, thank you all for your swift replies.

Recognition. A fighter pilot looking at his rear view mirror at the aircraft on his tail presenting its least frontal area would see the yellow wing leading edges and know it was friendly. If he saw a spiral spinner he would know it was a foe.

Extract from a combat report of 56 Squadron of 20th August 1941:

“The yellow line on the leading edge of the wings is easy to see and one pilot remarked that, on seeing an aircraft in his mirror behind him at some distance, one glance was sufficient to enable him to identify it as one of ours.”

It was for ID purposes, enabled a pilot to easily ID a friend from foe in combat especially in the mirror.