Star and Bar on a B-17
by Jon Burch Photography
Title
Star and Bar on a B-17
Artist
Jon Burch Photography
Medium
Photograph - Digital Capture & Enhancement
Description
The first military aviation insignias of the United States include a star used by the US Army Signal Corps Aviation Section, seen during the Pancho Villa punitive expedition, just over a year before American involvement in World War I began. The star was painted only on the vertical tail, in either red or blue. At the same time, the US Navy was using a blue anchor on the rudders of its seaplanes.
As of 19 May 1917 all branches of the military, outside of the Western Front of Europe were to use a circular dark-blue field containing the single, five-pointed regular pentagram-outline white star, symbolic of a U.S. state from the national flag, itself containing a central red circle, painted in the official flag colors.
In the months after Pearl Harbor it was thought that the central red dot could be mistaken for a Japanese Hinomaru, from a distance and in May 1942 it was eliminated. On aircraft in service they were painted over with white. During November 1942, US forces participated in the Torch landings and for this a chrome yellow ring was temporarily added to the outside of the roundel to reduce incidents of Americans shooting down unfamiliar British aircraft, which could themselves be distinguished by a similar yellow outline on the RAF's "Type C.1" fuselage roundels of the time.
None of these solutions was satisfactory as friendly fire incidents continued and so the US Government initiated a study that discovered that the red wasn't the issue since color couldn't be determined from a distance anyway, but the shape could be. After trying out several variations including an oblong roundel with two stars, they arrived at using white bars flanking the sides of the existing roundel, all with a red outline, which became official in June 1943.
This still wasn't entirely satisfactory and at least one operational unit refused to add the red, resulting in bare white bars on the existing star roundel. The red outline was then replaced with a blue outline whose color exactly matched the round blue field that held the star in September 1943. On US Navy aircraft painted overall in gloss midnight blue starting in 1944, the blue color of the roundels was similar to midnight blue, so the blue portion was eventually dispensed with and only the white portion of the roundel was painted on the aircraft.
In January 1947, single bisecting, lengthwise-running red bars, one per side, were added within the existing white bars on both USN and USAAF aircraft – both replacing the old center red circle, and restoring the official presence of a red device in the insignia, much as with the red stripes of the American flag – and in September of the same year, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) became an independent service and was renamed the United States Air Force (USAF).
UPDATE: Sadly 909 crashed and burned yesterday, October 3, 2019 at an airshow at Bradley International Airport at Windsor Locks, Connecticut. Seven people died. RIP!!!
Some digital effects were applied to this original image after the photograph was made. No electrons were harmed during the transition. Ordered images will not contain the FAA watermark.
Image copyright 2019 by Jon Burch Photography.
Uploaded
July 20th, 2019
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