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This is a listing of the nationality markings used by military aircraft of the United States, including those of the US Army, US Air Force, US Navy, US Marine Corps, US Coast Guard and their predecessors. The Civil Air Patrol is also included for the World War II period because it engaged in combat operations (primarily anti-submarine flights) which its July 1946 charter since explicitly forbade. ==History== The military aviation insignia of both the United States and Russia have had interesting "crossovers" early in the 20th century. The initial US Army Signal Corps aviation insignia used during the Pancho Villa punitive expedition just before American involvement in World War I began, used on the vertical tail and wings was a red five-pointed star similar to that of the later Soviet Union, without a red or white outline border. A tricolor roundel, similar to that used by Imperial Russia, but using proportions close to the era's British RFC roundel's colors, was introduced by the US Army Air Service in February 1918 for commonality with the other allies, all of whom used such roundels, and as Russia had already dropped out of the war. Even with American aircraft using vertically-striped British and French style tricolor fin flashes on the rudders during World War I, the British and French markings were painted with the blue vertical stripe forwardmost at the hinge line or leading edge, with red at the rudder's trailing edge — American aircraft reversed the red and blue vertical fin flash stripes' locations during the World War I years to avoid confusion. In addition, allegedly like the Union Jack for the British RFC earlier in the war, the May 1917-adopted red circle-centered white star in a dark blue circular field for all United States military aircraft was said to potentially resemble the German ''Luftstreitkräfte's Eisernes Kreuz'' at a distance, making its use in western Europe a possible hazard. Contemporary with the U.S. Army Signal Corps' red star, the US Navy was using an anchor symbol on the rudders of its seaplanes. As of 19 May 1917 all branches of the military, outside of the Western Front of Europe were to use a white star with a central red circle all in a blue circular field, painted in the official flag colors.〔Kershaw, Andrew: ''The First War Planes, Friend Or Foe, National Aircraft Markings'', pages 41–44. BCP Publishing, 1971.〕 Following the Armistice that ended World War I, in August 1919 the colors were adjusted to the current standards and the proportions were adjusted slightly so that the centre red circle was reduced slightly from being 1/3 of the diameter of the blue circular field, to being bound by the edges of an imaginary pentagram connecting the inner points of the star. In the months after Pearl Harbor it was realized that the central red circle could be construed as being a Japanese Hinomaru from a distance or in poor visibility, and in May 1942 the central red circle was eliminated permanently. On aircraft in service they were painted over with white. During November 1942, US forces participated in the Torch landings and for this a chrome yellow ring (of almost random thickness) was temporarily added to the outside of the roundel to reduce incidents of Americans shooting down unfamiliar British aircraft, which could themselves be distinguished by a similar chrome yellow outline on the RAF's "Type C.1" fuselage roundels of the time. None of these solutions was entirely satisfactory as friendly fire incidents continued and so the US Government initiated a study and discovered that the red wasn't the issue since color couldn't be determined from a distance anyway—but the shape could be. After trying out several variations including an oblong roundel with two stars, they arrived at using white bars flanking the sides of the existing roundel, all with a red outline, which became official in June 1943. This still wasn't entirely satisfactory and the red outline was replaced with a blue outline whose color exactly matched the round blue field that held the star in September 1943. On US Navy aircraft painted overall in gloss midnight blue starting in 1944-45, the blue color of the roundels was virtually identical to the background blue color, so the blue portion was eventually dispensed with and only the white portion of the roundel was painted on the aircraft. In January 1947 red bars were added within the existing white bars on both USN and USAAF aircraft — both replacing the old center red circle, and restoring the official presence of a red-colored device in the insignia, much as with the red stripes of the American flag — and in September of the same year, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) became an independent service and was renamed the United States Air Force (USAF), during the timeframe of the passage of the National Security Act of 1947 by the U.S. Congress that established the independent USAF service. In 1955 the USN would repaint all its aircraft from midnight blue to light grey over white and would use exactly the same roundel as the USAF again. Since then there have been some minor variations, mostly having to do with lo-visibility versions of the star and bars roundel. Air superiority F-15's eliminated the blue outline in the 1970s, and later some aircraft replaced the blue with black or a countershaded grey, or used a stencil to create an outlined "low-visibility" version. Partly due to the 1964 adoption of the "racing stripe" insignia on all of its aircraft, the United States Coast Guard, unique among the U.S. military organizations in the 21st century, places the same insignia used by the main Department of Defense aviation forces on the vertical fin of its fixed-wing aircraft, as a form of fin flash. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「United States military aircraft national insignia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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