World war 2 Aircraft tallies

[cheddar cheese]

Me too..it would keep people spirits up...

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

It is good for moral.

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

just small things that make you feel more comfortable being there...........

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Yeap and that is what they take away.

 

[classic]

I know this thread is like a decade old, but I thought I would revive it instead of starting a new one. Anyway, I recently have noticed a couple of pictures of WIII Allied planes in the Pacific that have both the regular Japanese flag (white with red circle) and Japanese navy flag ("rising sun" where there are red lines coming from the circle and it is left-of-center) "kill" tallies painted next to their cockpits. What could this difference mean? Part of me thought that maybe it was pilots distinguishing between having shot down planes that belonged to either the Japanese Army Air Service or the Imperial Navy, like bombers as opposed to Zeroes or something. Or maybe the Navy flag ones stand for ships that have been destroyed?

 

[Aozora]

I know this thread is like a decade old, but I thought I would revive it instead of starting a new one. Anyway, I recently have noticed a couple of pictures of WIII Allied planes in the Pacific that have both the regular Japanese flag (white with red circle) and Japanese navy flag ("rising sun" where there are red lines coming from the circle and it is left-of-center) "kill" tallies painted next to their cockpits. What could this difference mean? Part of me thought that maybe it was pilots distinguishing between having shot down planes that belonged to either the Japanese Army Air Service or the Imperial Navy, like bombers as opposed to Zeroes or something. Or maybe the Navy flag ones stand for ships that have been destroyed?

AFAIK the different types of flag don't signify anything in particular. For those flags that were painted on it would depend on how artistically inclined the ground-crew members were, or on what stencils might have been available. Many Allied victory markings were decals, so it would depend on what decals were available; more often than not victory markings on USN aircraft seemed to use the IJN flag with the "rays", although there were exceptions, probably due to what was available.

On this F6F there were three different styles that look to have been painted on:

Whereas these were decals (note the slight nick on the top-left victory marking):