Quote:
Originally Posted by jameson
Red Bands JG53, my bad...
Yes, apologies to Luthier, just posted off the top of my head from memory. I've done a little bit of digging about said redband and the actual reasons why JG53 ditched the pik as logo but it seems to be open to various schools of thought. Still it does appear that the entire geschwader changed over to the redband, as Frankboy says, around the beginning of August. What's a bit more difficult to find out is when it disappeared. As early as September by some accounts when the unit commander was replaced and the pik as was reinstated. To add to the confusion the yellow nose had become an official Luftwaffe BOB colour scheme by September (I understand), and was taken up by JG 53, and which may have occured when the unit moved to the Pas de Calais to perform close fighter escort for bombing attacks on London. (Could the yellow nose have been to protect themselves from their own bomber's gunners?).
The first example of the red band to have been shot down over England was on August 16th 1940, so it seems the red band was short lived. I did see a couple of shots of half of a red band over a yellow nose, one upper cowling, one lower. I would guess it died a natural death and disappeared fairly rapidly after the beginning of September. For III/JG53, I have read that there were 109's still flying without swastikas on Nov 20th 1940. Swastikas were added apparently to the actual rudder and not the tail plane on some 109's of JG53 when it was reinstated, just to add to the confusion!
Still hand up to say my initial posting was wide of the mark...
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its very simple, as i already said, the JG53 was officialy, by oerder (!), allowed to use the PikAs (instead of the Red Band) again from 20.Nov 1940 on. I could scan a picture out of Priens JG53 book about that, but im too lazy
and yes, still after that date it was common in the III.Group to overpaint the Swastika. When this behaviour ended, i dont know.....
the yellow color was introduced for a faster IFF in the hassle of aircombat. That this had tow sides is obvious...... not only the germas were able to tell their freinds very fast, also the british thier foes
anyway, there were so many kinds of yellow markings during BoB......some pilots/units didnt have them at all
actually, that makes skinning german fighters more interesting than RAF ones IMHO - more variants
the red band of JG53 and the yellow IFF markings where totaly independ things..............