Signs of Death

From the tortuous, terraced streets of Chungking, frightened Chinese saw doom in the blood-red discs on the under side of raiders' wings before ever a Japanese bomb had been dropped. The people of Madrid and Barcelona learned to duck whenever they saw the red-&-yellow wing insignia of Nationalist ships overhead. Fighting tribesmen in Palestine know they must take to cover whenever attack planes sweep down on them with the blue-white-&-red wing targets of Great Britain.

Distinctive national insignia for fighting planes were originated early in the World War so that in the split-second action of aerial dogfights pilots could quickly identify friendly planes, would fire on none by mistake. After the War their use soon spread to all the world's air forces. Even with camouflage they will probably be used in the next great war, both for their identification factor and because the sight of friendly wings overhead is a morale builder for ground troops. As the flags of nations have disappeared from modern battlefields, they thus reappear, in new forms (see next two pages), in the battles of the air.

That they also enable panicked noncombatants to identify low-flying raiders, and even bombers in the middle military altitudes, is of no great military importance. Defending anti-aircraft crews identify friendly and enemy planes by their distinctive silhouettes, and to them wing and tail markings are only confirming evidence that approaching ships should be fired on or allowed to go by.

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