Spirals on spinners

[windhund116]

Other than Germany, did any other country paint spirals on their airplane spinners?

Thanks!

 

[tyrodtom]

I don't know.
But I bet most allied aircraft didn't want to have any marking on their aircraft that was a known characteristic of Luftwaffe aircraft, they got shot at enough by mistake as it was.

 

[windhund116]

Odd how no other Axis air forces used the "Kullerschnauze."

 

[pbehn]

Odd how no other Axis air forces used the "Kullerschnauze."

Maybe deliberately so. I think it was Geoffrey Wellum who was asked by Leigh Mallory about painting spinners. Wellum said "just paint them plain colours as they are now, when I see a brightly painted spinner I know it isn't one of ours".

 

[windhund116]

Maybe the protection of ground crews is the spiral's true function?

Why spirals?

 

[pbehn]

Maybe the protection of ground crews is the spiral's true function?

Why spirals?

Maybe but watching a video doesn't show the real effect, with all the turbo props I have seen with a spiral on the spinner it turned to a blur as soon as the engine was running, a video introduces a strobe effect which can have the spiral stationary or running backwards depending on engine speed. Same with the prop blades and car wheels on some videos. It is dangerous on rotating machinery when using A/C lighting.

 

[tyrodtom]

I've read that they thought it confused someone trying to shoot at it from straight ahead.
I've only seen film pictures on a TV, on them the strobe effect slows it down so it appears to be rotating slowly.
But how it would appear to the human eye viewing it directly I don't know.

 

[Dana Bell]

Some 4 or 5 decades ago, George Hopp found the original German documentation ordering the spirals and the flickering spinners as a recognition feature when approaching friendly (for them) ground forces.

Cheers,


Dana

 

[CATCH 22]

Other than Germany, did any other country paint spirals on their airplane spinners?
Thanks!

Romania

ANR

Croatia

Bulgaria

Hungary

and so on....

 

[ODonovan]

Hess said he painted the spiral on the spinner himself. Damn nearly froze his ass off doing it, too. Quite a few of the other 356th FG Mustangs had spiral spinners, including Major Don Strait's "Jersey Jerk." I guess it was a matter of personal preference, as there were also quite a few which didn't.

When Hess rotated back stateside and someone repainted his plane, they renamed it "MiASSiS DRAGON" and either the spinner was replaced or repainted, as it didn't retain the spiral. I didn't find a record of the aircraft being reassigned, so it may have just been flown on a daily basis, by anyone whose assigned aircraft was out of service.

-Irish

 

[stona]

Maybe the protection of ground crews is the spiral's true function?

That was NOT their function on WW2 era Luftwaffe aircraft. They were quite explicitly a recognition marking, probably with origins in the spirals or other marking painted on the spinners of aircraft in their Staffel colours.

I'm not going to quote the entire sequence of orders and events, as reflected in German documents and ULTRA intercepts, just a document from July 1944 which makes it clear to what the spirals were to be applied and why.

'With effect from today, the recognition markings of our own aircraft in the Western Area (Germany), France and Italy will be changed as follows.

1(a) Fighters, including twin engine fighters, ground attack and reconnaissance aircraft are to have a black and white spiral painted on their spinners.

1(b) All other operational aircraft, no special recognition markings.

2(a) Captured aircraft*, if flown operationally, to be marked as per 1(a) above.'

My bold.

*A reference to Italian aircraft used on the Italian Front.

 

[GrumpyOldCrewChief]

This puts a dejure date into effect for the spiral, but was this just a formalization of a defacto previous practice? Or a reiterization and reemphasizing of existing orders?

 

[stona]

This was definitely a formalisation of a practice which had been initially introduced in February. This is typical of the Luftwaffe.

An ULTRA decrypt of 12 February ('44) was an order for the spinner spiral recognition marking to be applied on fighter aircraft (specifically) operating in the Reich and with Luftflotte 3, in France.

On 25th June an order seemed to remove all other tactical markings, probably in response to the allied 'Special Markings' (invasion stripes etc) and just retain the spinner spiral, national markings, kennziffer and group marks.

On 29th June a message to Luftflotte 3 said that additional tactical markings should be retained, which evidently caused some confusion.

The 20th July order quoted in part in my original answer was supposed to be a clarification.

 

[Alfa Oscar]

Other than Germany, did any other country paint spirals on their airplane spinners?

Finland did. This picture was taken after the war. Also white/ black spirals appeared on some Bf-109:s and at least one Fiat G-50.

Picture source: asisbiz.com

 

[windhund116]

Found a couple interesting videos on YouTube, showing pie and spiral spinner patterns. One animation, one working scale model.

Animation dogfight

Scale model