U.S. aircraft in the Philippines, 1937-1942

Thanks Duane. Nice to know we're in agreement. I've been lambasted as a heretic in the past for suggesting that some PI-based P-35As were painted in durable camouflage colours. Apparently one of the (few) books on the subject only mentions water-based paints and that has become "accepted history" even though the photographic evidence indicates greater variety in camouflage application and durability.

Do you know of a reference for the various marking changes that took place during 1941 and early 1942? I'm trying to work out when the fuselage stars would have been applied, or when national markings in 4 or 6 locations were specified.

Cheers,
Mark

Great post, I did not know about the P-35's carrying passengers, thanks.

buffnut453 said:

Thanks Duane. Nice to know we're in agreement. I've been lambasted as a heretic in the past for suggesting that some PI-based P-35As were painted in durable camouflage colours. Apparently one of the (few) books on the subject only mentions water-based paints and that has become "accepted history" even though the photographic evidence indicates greater variety in camouflage application and durability.

Do you know of a reference for the various marking changes that took place during 1941 and early 1942? I'm trying to work out when the fuselage stars would have been applied, or when national markings in 4 or 6 locations were specified.

Cheers,
Mark

Click to expand...

Air Force Colors Vol. 1 1926-1942
Dana Bell
Squadron Signal Publications

You can get it on Amazon

One only has to look at the pic of the captured P-35A to confirm the use of durable(oil base) paint. Can you imagine what it would have looked like at the time of its capture if it had gone through the campaign in water based paint?

Duane

OK. Here's another one to ponder. Where did the practice of painting out the red center of the insignia start? Officially, orders came down in May of '42. However it's more or less common knowledge that in Australia it started sometime after the withdrawal from Java, at least on P-40s of the 49th Pursuit Group and it was assumed that it was where the practice started. Published photos of John Brownewell's P-40E at Del Monte and of one captured at Del Monte lead me to think otherwise. Both a/c have the center painted out. While it's impossible to pin down when it was done I tend to believe that the practice started there and was picked up and fowarded to Australia by crews of supply and evacuation a/c coming in and out of Del Monte. I recently saw a pic of a 3rd Bomb Group Royce Mission B-25 taken right after it's return from the mission. The center was brush painted out in such a rushed manner that runs in the paint were evident. I'm betting it was done in the PI when it got there.

Duane

Duane,

Can you point me to the published pics of the P-40s at Del Monte that lack red centres to the insignia? I've been through a great little Japanese book on captured Allied aircraft and all the PI-based airframes have the red centres.

Cheers,
Mark

Here's the pic of the captured one. I think I got it off J-aircraft.com. I suspect you have the same little Japanese book that I have which has a different view of this ship with Japanese markings. Brownewell's P-40 is shown on page 60 of On Wings We Conquer by John H. Mitchell. It's apoor quality photo but the new white paint stands out. The captured P-40 was one of two flown by American pilots to Nichols under escort. They were also demonstrated by American pilots for JAAF officials.

This is, without a doubt, my favorite thread!

varsity078740 said:

Here's the pic of the captured one. I think I got it off J-aircraft.com. I suspect you have the same little Japanese book that I have which has a different view of this ship with Japanese markings. Brownewell's P-40 is shown on page 60 of On Wings We Conquer by John H. Mitchell. It's apoor quality photo but the new white paint stands out. The captured P-40 was one of two flown by American pilots to Nichols under escort. They were also demonstrated by American pilots for JAAF officials.

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Thanks Duane. I think it will be hard to come up with any definitive answer to your question about overpainting of the red centres to the national markings. The red centre is still visible in the pic you posted suggesting water-based white paint, hurried application or, perhaps, even just odd lighting and the red centre isn't actually overpainted (although this latter option may be something of a reach). Aside from this exception (and the other in "On Wings We Conquer" which I haven't seen), all other pics of Philippines-based aircraft show red centres (eg the P-35A wrecks and even the captured P-35A in the pics I posted). It's rather baffling because I just don't see individual pilots saying, "The red centres make me look like a Jap fighter so I'll have my groundcrew overpaint them with white" but, conversely, if it was mandated by higher command I'd expect to see more examples of the practice on wrecks or captured airframes.

'Tis a puzzlement!

I know in a lot of older automotive paint systems, red would "bleed" through all light colors, especially white. With white even after several coats, you'd still have a pinkish tint where ever it had been red. The only way to prevent it was to first cover it with black, then topcoat it with whatever color you wanted. They were probably too rushed to do a perfect refinish.

Entirely agree...I'm still just puzzling why these 2 airframes appear to have overpainted red centres when other airframes in the Philippines, including ones that were captured intact (and hence were probably still operational quite late in the campaign) , still retained red centres.

I'm speculating, of course, but maybe it was only done on Mindanao.

Duane

The P-40 in the photo, above also featured in photo from a different angle in Bartsch (in "Doomed", can't see the star), as well as the other P-40 captured there, were from the three P-40E-1's brought crated to Mindanao by the blockade runner Anhui in March 1942, not ones on Luzon at the beginning of the war. This is described by Bartsch as well as in other sources. The nose color scheme was an unusual product of the contingent on Mindanao, said to be inspired by publications they'd read (probably also brought in by the blockade runner) showing AVG P-40 tiger/shark mouths. So perhaps the white out of the red star center was another improvisation of the same imaginative team who painted that airplane. AFAIK there's no photo of the other plane which can be verified as being that plane and having been taken near the time of its capture.

The Japanese captured at least 5 P-40E's restorable to flying condition, since the P-40 detachment of the JAAF 50th Flying Regiment in Burma in 1943 had that many. The others were probably reconstructed from semi-wrecked P-40's captured at airfields on Java, or from the crated P-40's from the freighter Sea Witch dumped into the harbor at Tjilatjap on Java. So, later photo's of captured P-40's could be PI or DEI planes.

But here's something interesting I found wrt the markings of P-40's captured on Java. The first picture is from 日本軍鹵獲機秘録 , (~'Japanese Army Captured A/c –Secret Files', ISBN 4769810474, maybe it's the 'small Japanese book' referred to above?), p.61. The second picture is from Bartsch's "Every Day a Nightmare" p.138. It seems to be the same two a/c taken from a slightly different angle (trees and tents seem to be the same). Perhaps the Japanese painted or retouched out the red dots to avoid confusion of the lay public in Japan who might also mistake the red dot for the 'hinomaru' marking? I'm not attached to that theory, but anyway that photo comparison makes it harder to draw any conclusion about the meaning of the lack of red dot in the Mindanao photo.

Note also that the Japanese repainted some of the captured P-40's in an imitation pre-war USAAC scheme, with tail stripes, for the movie "Kato Hayabusa Regiment". Again perhaps the tail stripes were supposed to remove any confusion about the nationality of these planes to the Japanese audience, though the enemy in this movie, of the 64th Flying Regiment in Burma in 1942, flying Type 1 Fighters aka Hayabusa and led by Kato, would have been the AVG, whose a/c carried Chinese Nationalist AF markings.

Baeza's "Soleil Levant Sur l'Australie" has a number of photo's of USAAF P-40's in Australia with the red center dots dated as late as May 1942, in line with the general conventional wisdom that elimination of the dots dated from that month (the change was officially ordered in the USN on May 15, and some sources say it was applied to USAAAF in the field generally in late May). However the dates of those photos can't be independently verified by the reader.



日本軍鹵獲機秘録 p.61, dots


"Every Day a Nightmare" p.138, no dots


日本軍鹵獲機秘録 p.97, captured P-40, unknown origin, painted for "Kato Hayabusa Regiment"

Joe

varsity078740 said:

I'm speculating, of course, but maybe it was only done on Mindanao.

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But why on just a few aircraft? The whole point of national markings (at least in WWII) was to fulfill a basic visual IFF function. Why adopt a national marking variation that nobody else was using, bearing in mind that the change would have to be promulgated to all AAA and ground force units in hopes they don't shoot at your own aircraft?

Joe,

I like your idea of the Japanese retouching the US insignia. That does make (some) sense - I think it's more plausible than having one or two aircraft being re-marked by US forces. That said, the quality of the second image isn't great - is the right edge blurred in the digitizing process (looks like the book wasn't laid flat on the platen) or is the original blurred too?

Cheers,
B-N

I don't buy the theory that the insignia in the Bartsch photo was painted out by the Japanese, especially when photos from a different angle show them intact. Besides one has to be carefull when viewing photos of a/c with the early insignia. Glare can
fool one into believing the center is not there especially in a poor quality pic. Besides, assuming that the Del Monte P-40 was altered by the U.S., why do all the other photos of captured a/c either have the insignia intact, or removed entirely and replaced with japanese insignia? In my opinion the tail stripes on the "movie" P-40 was intended to highlite that it WAS an American a/c and used the pre-war tail stripes and the circle around the cocarde to direct attention. After all, it was Japanese hollywood.

Buff. You have to realize that at that stage of the war there really was no standardization of national markings in the Pacific. They varied greatly depending on the area. As an example. All a/c in Hawaii, including Army a/c had red and white tail stripes added per the Navy directive in early 1942. This included transient a/c eventually bound for other areas such as Austrailia. As a result, the B-26s of the 22nd BG had them when they reached Austraila and for time after that. The Royce Mission B-17s that had previously been in Hawaii had them and were certainly the only a/c at that time in the Philippines with tail stripes. As the photo of the 8th PS P-40 shows, there was no continuity regarding markings even within the 49th PG. The 9th squadron often retained the full size red center on the fuselage but painted out the wing centers(page 39, Protect Avenge The 49th Fighter Group in WWII). The 7th squadron apparently did not alter their a/c The P-400s in the well known photo at Henderson Field still had the red center in August of '42!

Duane

varsity078740 said:

1. I don't but the theory that the insignia in the Bartsch photo was painted out by the Japanese, especially when photos from a different angle show them intact. Besides one has to be carefull when viewing photos of a/c with the early insignia. Glare can
fool one into believing the center is not there especially in a poor quality pic.

2. Besides, assuming that the Del Monte P-40 was altered by the U.S., why do all the other photos of captured a/c either have the insignia intact, or removed entirely and replaced with japanese insignia.

3. In my opinion the tail stripes on the "movie" P-40 was intended to highlite that it WAS an American a/c and used the pre-war tail stripes and the circle around the cocarde to direct attention. After all, it was Japanese hollywood.

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1. The point about glare seems possible, different sun condition in the one photo, though the contrast of the dots in the other photo seems pretty high. The 'no dot' photo is only blurred on the right because I didn't hold the book down so heavily on the scanner; the book is still nice and new . I can make out no sign of the dot in the 'no dot' photo, even with a strong magnifying glass. Is there perhaps some other case of a photo where we know for sure there were red dots but they became invisible in a photo due to light conditions, to demonstrate that theory?

Anyway, the photo quality is something to consider, but something else to consider is the provenance of these various photos of captured Allied a/c. A number of them come from the Japanese version of 'Life' magazine, ie were published for the Japanese public. But others may not have been. So IMO as important a missing piece of info about the dot/no-dot pair of photos as relative sun condition (which I guess we could never know) would be whether they come from a Japanese wartime publication or a non-published participant/witness collection. Neither book makes that clear; the Japanese book just doesn't say, and Bartsch just credits his version to his own collection.

2. But, assuming we still think it's possible the Japanese altered one version of the "Java"* photo above (I still do) there aren't actually a lot of other photos. The Hayabusa movie ones don't count IMO because we know the markings were altered by the Japanese at least on the tail. In fact, that movie was filmed in 1943 so the a/c in the picture was almost certainly painted in Japanese markings earlier and later completely repainted in the movie maker's version of US markings.

3. That's what I meant, publicity types wanted to be sure a general audience knew that the P-40's in the movie were American planes, rather than be accurate. I theorize that by the same token published pictures of captured or semi-wrecked P-40's with red dots included in their markings might have been viewed as less than 100% clearly American to a Japanese general audience, so in that case they simply painted or re-touched out the red dots, rather than the more elaborate addition of tail stripes. OTOH once the a/c were in Japan they needed Japanese markings for safety reasons. The best known photos in Japanese markings were taken at a public display of the various captured a/c at a fair ground in the Tokyo area in summer 1942. At that time three P-40E's appeared; the other 2+ the Japanese eventually flew were not present, perhaps not restored yet.

*I said Java but those two P-40's were captured semi-wrecked at Denpasar a/f on Bali.

Joe

Joe:

You're using examples that do not apply to the original thread-U.S. a/c in the PI. Speculating on if, how, what, and why the Japanese marked up a/c captured in the East Indies for propaganda movies is another topic to be dicussed. But what evidence is there to indicate that the Del Monte P-40 was altered by the Japanese? Why would they paint out the red center AND THEN replace it with Japanese insignia? As early as March of '42, P-40s in Australia were altered in a fashion BY AMERICANS that in no way conformed to then current regulations. Why is it such a stretch to accept that the same thing occured at Del Monte and may have originated there?

varsity078740 said:

Joe:
You're using examples that do not apply to the original thread-U.S. a/c in the PI. Speculating on if, how, what, and why the Japanese marked up a/c captured in the East Indies for propaganda movies is another topic to be dicussed. But what evidence is there to indicate that the Del Monte P-40 was altered by the Japanese? Why would they paint out the red center AND THEN replace it with Japanese insignia? As early as March of '42, P-40s in Australia were altered in a fashion BY AMERICANS that in no way conformed to then current regulations. Why is it such a stretch to accept that the same thing occured at Del Monte and may have originated there?

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I'm not saying it's impossible the US crews painted out the red dot in the Mindanao photo. It's just that that photo is a Japanese photo of the plane after it was under Japanese control, not a US photo when the plane was under US control. So it's reasonable to consider the possibility the Japanese altered the marking or the photo. And this possiblity seems at least potentially supported by the two photo's of the Denpasar P-40's, where one Japanese photo seems to have eliminated the dots (again on this point I'm not 100% insisting that the dots aren't present but OTOH I find the theory that they'd become so invisible just due to glare less than 100% convincing as well; again showing an example of a photo with 100% known red dots which become that totally invisible in a photo due to glare would make it more convincing IMO).

Since the various incidents we're discussing all happened around the same time, and if the planes/photos were altered it would be the same people involved (Japanese publicity authorities) I don't see that the Denpasar case is off topic at all.

As far as the painting of the planes in Japanese markings, as I mentioned that was done when the a/c were shipped to Japan, an obvious precaution against them being mistaken during their test flights for US planes somehow attacking Japan, something the Japanese military and public was hyper-sensitive to at the time, following the Doolittle Raid. And when photos of the planes in those markings were published in Japan, it was in reporting a public display of the a/c in Tokyo, so any earlier issue of making clear that the planes were war booty would have disappeared anyway. The timing of the marking change and display of the planes is explained in the 日本軍鹵獲機秘録 book mentioned above.

Joe

Joe: Here's a perfect example of how glare can distort an image. Go to Stock Footage Archival Video Clips and Historic Photo Images from CriticalPast. Search P-40. On the third page, click on the third video Air Defence In Hawaii, a pre war newsreel. Where's the red center on the first P-40 you see?
You can just make it out in the 2nd one. On the 3rd on it's much clearer. Regarding the Del Monte P-40, if you read Bartsch's account of how the P-40 was transfered to Nichols, it's pretty clear that the photo in question was taken just prior to the initial ferry flight from Maramag(where it was captured) to Malaybalay, two days after it was found hidden in the jungle. The account notes the presence of American ground crew and a pilot which is what the photo shows. The photo
shown in the "little red book" was taken at Nichols and has Japanese insignia. Doesn't it stand to reason that the first pic shows the P-40 as captured, Prior to a change to Japanese insignia for the flight to Nichols? Why alter the markings twice?

Duane

Duane,

Your final question is entirely valid and, to be honest, I don't know if anyone has, or will ever have, a definitive answer. However, there's another question that has yet to be answered - why would US personnel alter the markings of one or two aircraft? As noted previously, national markings are primarily a visual form of identification. The argument that the red centres were overpainted it to prevent confusion with Japanese hinomaru doesn't make sense if your proposed timeline, that the red centres were overpainted towards the very end of the campaign, is correct. Specific reasons for the theory not making sense include:

1. There were no other friendly air forces so no real risk of airborne blue-on-blue.

2. If the concern was about ground forces, the information about the marking change would have to be promulgated to those ground units (and the PBI is notoriously bad at aircraft identification in any case). Indeed, the Japanese had such aerial supremacy by the latter stages of the campaign that ground forces would feel entirely justified in shooting at anything in the sky so, again, changing the markings makes little sense.

3. Why do all other pics of captured aircraft and wrecked airframes show markings with red centres? Surely the markings on all USAFFE aircraft should have been modified to ensure adequate overall protection of the dwindling air assets?

In short, although we have no plausible explanation for the Japanese to change markings, equally there isn't a good logical reason for US personnel to overpaint the red centres on one or two airframes when all other aircraft in that theatre still retained the red dots?

Sadly, photographs can be misleading because things can change very quickly. A photo of an aircraft taken in the morning may show one set of markings, or perhaps a partial transition between marking styles, whereas another photo taken that afternoon could show the airframe in a very different condition. Unless we know precisely who took an image and when, it's very difficult to interpolate the reasons for some of the changes we're discussing here.

Cheers,
B-N