USAAF unit identification aircraft markings
USAAF unit identification aircraft markings, commonly called "tail markings" after their most frequent location, were numbers, letters, geometric symbols, and colors painted onto the tails (vertical stabilizer fins, rudders and horizontal surfaces), wings, or fuselages of the aircraft of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) during the Second World War.
The purpose of these markings was to serve as call signs in the Royal Air Force (RAF) radio procedures used in the UK.
As the buildup of troops continued in the Europe, Africa, Middle East Campaign (EAME), the United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe (USSTAF) bomber formations grew and assembly necessitated better visual unit identification at greater distance.
To facilitate control among thousands of bombers, the USAAF devised a system of aircraft tail markings in 1943 to identify groups and wings.
Both the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces used a system of large, readily-identifiable symbols combined with alphanumerics to designate groups when all USAAF bombers were painted drab olive in color.
The Twentieth Air Force, eventually operating 20 groups and 1,000 bombers, also adopted a tail identification system overseas.
However the size of the Allied air forces began to exhaust possible two-letter combinations, and made difficult the timely assembly of heavy bomber tactical formations.
The USAAF decided to discontinue further camouflage painting of its aircraft in late 1943 and these began to reach Groups in February, 1944.
When two additional groups joined the wing in April 1944, the wing then identified its groups by a letter Y on the uppermost area of the tail fin, superimposed on the symbol previously used (in a manner similar to the system used by the Eighth) with the new 463rd BG using a cone-shaped device and the 483rd BG a five-pointed star that was displayed below the Y instead of underlying it.
From April 1945 forward all twenty groups, organized into five bomb wings, were assigned to XXI Bomber Command, which standardized its markings.
The 58th Bomb Wing had been the first to deploy, beginning combat in June 1944 with only a handful of B-29's painted in the standard olive drab camouflage.
Each of its four groups employed a different method while based in the China Burma India Theater as part of XX Bomber Command.
The 40th BG painted four horizontal stripes across the upper tail fin with the letter identification of the airplane below it.
The 444th BG numbered its aircraft and placed it within a large blue diamond outlined in yellow on the tail fin.
The 73rd Bomb Wing began combat in October 1944 from Isley Field, Saipan, and marked its aircraft similarly to that of the Fifteenth Air Force 55th CBW.
A letter denoting the group was painted on the upper third of the tail fin, with a square symbol in the center, and an aircraft identifier, known as the "victor number," in the lower third.
In order to quickly mark its increasing numbers of aircraft, the 314th Wing painted 96-inch black boxes on the tail fins and stenciled the group identifier, either M, O, P or K in BMF 72-inch block letters.
The 22d Bombardment Group, which converted from B-25 medium bombers in 1944, placed a 40-inch-wide (1,000 mm) rectangle horizontally bisecting the tail fin, with each squadron having a different color.
The Tenth's 7th Bombardment Group used a checkerboard pattern in either black-and-white or black-and-yellow on the rudder or part of the tail fin to identify its squadrons.
