National
Markings
National markings have been worn on military aircraft from the earliest days of the First World War when it was realised that the accidental shooting down of friendly aircraft was probably just as likely as deliberately destroying an enemy. After initially using a red on white St. George's cross insignia which at distance bore a similarity to the German black cross, this was quickly changed to a tri-coloured roundel with it's colours reversed to the French allies. A red centre, surrounded by a white circle, surrounded by a blue circle forms the basis of the roundel which is still in use today.
Usually worn on 6 locations (fuselage sides, plus above and below each wing),
the roundel is also supplemented by a 3 colour vertical flash on the fin or
rudder, with red being the leading colour.
Later variations to the basic marking were made to tone down the roundel in
order to avoid it from spoiling camouflage schemes. The red and blue colours
were made less vivid, and the white circle thinned down considerably when initially
used on night fighters during the second world war. A thin yellow outer circle
was later added to this roundel when it was painted on more tactical types, and
even later both the yellow and white were removed, initially on high altitude
photo-reconnaissance types. After the war the traditional 3 coloured roundel
became more in vogue for a while, but with the cold war reintroduction of
camouflage the 2 colour tactical roundel became the standard. The V-bomber force
introduced an all white anti-flash colour scheme, and this meant that the
three-coloured roundel had to be toned down to a pale blue, white, and pink
version. These colours made a re-appearance on the all-grey air-defence types in
the 1980s in a small 2 colour pink and pale blue roundel.
Today the 3 coloured roundels are worn on training and high visibility aircraft
types, the 2 coloured red and blue tactical roundel is worn on generally darker
camouflaged tactical aircraft types, whilst the pink and light blue roundel is
worn on the light grey camouflaged air-defence types.