Dear ScottRC:
The PIPE Here again-and if you saw my "title" of my previous post here in THIS thread, I mentioned that US Air Service aircraft, at the very beginning, actually had RED STARS as insignia!
The very early models of Curtiss "tractor" (prop at the nose, unlike the earlier Curtiss "pushers") aircraft,
like the Curtiss R-4 "pre-Jenny" biplanes used to hunt down Mexican warlord Pancho Villa in 1916-17, actually had RED STARS on their rudders and (I believe) wing panels!!! I DO remember an old photo of one of these planes taking off that appeared in a long-ago issue of Leo Opdycke's WORLD WAR I AERO quarterly magazine, and where the black-and-white photographic film in those long-ago days tended to act more like today's INFRARED film in how the gray tones were SO dark on any color containing ANY degree of red pigment, the RED stars actually looked VERY dark-ALMOST black-in "gray-tone" value.
Of course, and MUCH better known of, was the case where the USA was told by the British that the Americans' next insignia, the famous "Star-in-Circle" emblem of the Golden Age era between the wars, COULD be misread as a German Eisernes Kreuz at a distance by mistake-so the USA, in late 1917, picked up the Imperial RUSSIAN "roundel" marking, but made the proportions MUCH more like a British RFC/RAF roundel-so there's TWO instances of "Russian insignia" being used on US warplanes in our nation's history!
I was FLOORED when I saw that WW I AERO photo of that Curtiss R-4 taking off in 1916, in the American Southwest,
with what looked like SOVIET stars on its rudder and (I think) under its wing...if I EVER find that photo, I'll scan it and share it here at RCU with my fellow av-fans!
Yours Sincerely,
The PIPE!
And WHOOPS, PhillyBaby-the Messerschmitt 109
is CORRECTLY prefixed "Bf"...make NO mistake about it!!! Just ask me by Email about WHY this is true, and I'll explain...no kiddin' !