032 - War Paint III - Wing Insignia

During World War Two, there were the main countries involved: China and Japan, The United States and Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and Russia. However, there was also a collection of smaller countries such as Australia, India, Iceland, and the Netherlands.

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Each of these countries also had their own Air Forces and in the chaos of air-to-air combat, pilots needed to be able to distinguish their own planes from those of the enemy. To help, each country developed its own unique insignia to display on their planes.

Each insignia was symbolic of its country. For example, the British insignia (upper left) consisted of three rings, red, white, and blue. The ring design was prominent during World War I. However, many countries, like Great Britain, Australia, and the United States, shared the same colors.

To combat confusion between similar circular colors, national symbols like the Kangaroo (upper right) and China’s 12-ray White Sun  (lower left) were incorporated into the designs. Netherlands (who also has a red, white, and blue flag) used an inverted orange triangle, the orange being symbolic of the Dutch people.

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The original design for the U.S. Air Corps was a simple red star inside a white circle. In 1917, the symbol changed into the dot-in-a-star-in-a-circle shown at right. For a short time, the American Air Corps planes also sported circle-in-circle design, similar to the British insignia, but the design reverted back to the star-in-circle design.
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It was considered both reminiscent of Eddie Rickenbacker’s “Hat in the Ring Gang”, and the American flag since it featured a red dot inside a white star on a field of blue.