Yellow leading edges - when did they stop?

[Guest]

Hi all;

Does anyone know when the RAF stopped painting wing leading edges yellow? I am doing a Tempest V, based in Germany in late 1945 - by that time, sky fuselage bands and spinners had been painted out, so did they do they same to the yellow edges?

Any help gratefully received!

[stona]

Good question and I don't know the answer. My trusty old 'British Aviation Colours of World War Two' is precisely that and doesn't extend to the post war era ):

Edit. I found an image of a Tempest which doesn't appear to have this marking, but it's not certain. I have posed the question elsewhere.

Steve

[Guest]

Equally interesting is why yellow tips ?

Assume they had yellow tips to reduce loss of personnel. Is that correct ?

Laurie

[rickoshea52]

I have heard that it was to identify the aircraft friendly to other RAF pilots.

[stona]

Not yellow tips, the yellow strip went from the wing tip to half way along the wing. It was an IFF marking and was supposed to be particularly visible when looking at an aircraft behind, or viewed in a mirror. The Luftwaffe equivalent was the spinner spiral.

Nobody seems to know when it was deleted. It may have remained on camouflaged aircraft after the war. It did not appear on uncamouflaged aircraft. Edgar Brooks, in a reply on Britmodeller, referred to an order of February 1946 concerned with aircraft finished in silver in which there is no mention of the yellow stripes.

Cheers

Steve

[Guest]

Thanks Steve - I shall do the Tempest with them on. Actually, that's the least of my worries - fitting a complete new resin tail to the Eduard kit is a real challenge!

[stona]

The marking seems to have worked, maybe that's why it was continued at least until the end of the war. Here is an extract from a 56 Squadron combat report of 20th August 1941, a few days after the marking was introduced.

"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."



Cheers

Steve

[Guest]

Nice idea presumably went out of fashion due to the jet innovation.

Is there any way to day that they distinguish ie radio signal etc ?

Laurie

[stona]

Nice idea presumably went out of fashion due to the jet innovation.Is there any way to day that they distinguish ie radio signal etc ?

Laurie

Electronic IFF was introduced during WW2 and is obviously a LOT more sophisticated today. In WW2 the equipment carried in the aircraft identified them as friendly to ground controllers, not usually to other aircraft (though I vaguely remember a system fitted to RAF bombers which identified them as friendly to British night fighters late in the war). It was vital for controllers to know where their own fighters were and which plots on their tables (or glass 'walls' for the Germans) were hostile. The only way for pilots to identify aircraft, or to confirm that they had been vectored on to an enemy formation and not a friendly one, was visually.

This is not the case today where friendly aircraft (and by default hostile aircraft) are identified to the pilots electronically and in any case many attacks are launched from beyond visual range and the sort of 'fur ball' dog fights of earlier eras rarely happen. You can see an aircraft at a range of about three miles in good conditions. Even some so called short range air to air missiles today have ranges well beyond that in ideal circumstances.

Throughout WW2 a huge variety of identification markings were painted on the aircraft of all nationalities in an effort to aid identification to friendly forces on the ground as well as in the air.

To shoot down an aircraft with machine guns or cannon usually meant being within 500m of the target and often a lot closer. That is well within visual range and national markings, fuselage bands, spinner spirals, yellow leading edges or any number of other distinctive markings might be seen.

Cheers

Steve

[Guest]

Think, from memory, Steve that some of the WW11 Raf Bomber crews switched their IFF off as they had the distinct feeling that the signals were being read by the German Fighter Crews.

Also from memory again the Luftwaffe were not reading those signals.

Laurie

[stona]

Think, from memory, Steve that some of the WW11 Raf Bomber crews switched their IFF off as they had the distinct feeling that the signals were being read by the German Fighter Crews.Also from memory again the Luftwaffe were not reading those signals.

Laurie

You are probably thinking of 'Monica' tail warning radar which, as the name suggests, was to warn the bomber crew of an approaching night fighter. The Germans most definitely were homing in on it using the FuG 227 (Flensburg) receiver. 'Monica' was withdrawn after a Flensburg equipped Luftwaffe Ju 88 G night fighter accidentally landed at RAF Woodbridge and the boffins got a look at its system.

In late 1943 the Germans got their FuG 350 (Naxos) radar receiver operational. This could also detect the emissions from the RAF's H2S ground scanning radar though it could only give a bearing and not a range IIRC.

Bomber Command did have an IFF system which allowed friendly night fighters to distinguish valid targets. The standard 'Serrate' installation included an 'identification friend or foe interrogator' which implies that friendly bombers must have had a transponder on board which this device could interrogate. It is rather obvious that at night, during the few seconds of an attack, it would be very difficult to make a correct identification visually. Luftwaffe night fighter pilots did have the advantage of knowing that any four engine aircraft they found was almost certainly a target.

Cheers

Steve

[Dave W]

Thanks Steve - I shall do the Tempest with them on. Actually, that's the least of my worries - fitting a complete new resin tail to the Eduard kit is a real challenge!

I've got that resin correction set for my Tempest .Im interested to see how you get on with it?.

[Guest]

Well, the tail is on, Dave! Lots of sanding and a bit of filling, but it's a decent fit. Unfortuantely, sanding isn't my best or favourite subject, but I've got it as good as I can get it. I'll post the finished result!

[stona]

. Unfortuantely, sanding isn't my best or favourite subject,

You are not alone Andy, not alone

Steve