Launch marker

Five Japanese flags for the downing of Japanese aircraft on an American Grumman F4F Wildcat, 1942

In the military , especially during times of war, members of the armed forces paint launch markings (also called success marks) on combat vehicles and other weapons to show how many enemy vehicles they have eliminated or how many bombs they have successfully carried out. These are not official markings, but are mainly to be understood as a kind of trophy and hit rate.

species

The simplest symbol for a launch marker are lines or notches that are painted in groups of five on vehicles or carved into rifle butts. In particular, they can be found on fighters , bombers , battle tanks , armored vehicles , self-propelled guns , assault guns and submarines . Various symbols are used as markings.

Examples

• So z. B. differentiate which class of aircraft or vehicles were shot down by using the appropriate symbol.
• Some armed forces use the enemy emblem , such as For example, during World War II, the scaled-down version of Japanese war flags of the Imperial Japanese Air Force , which were painted on the aircraft by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) and the US Navy to indicate that Japanese planes had been shot down.
• During the Second World War, German swastikas and Reich War flags were painted on the aircraft by USAAF fighter jets to represent enemy kills. The associated machine type was partially added as a silhouette.

The pilots of tactical and strategic bombers paint small bomb symbols for successful missions on their machines. On armored vehicles, launch markings were also placed on the cannon barrel.

During the Second World War there were German anti-aircraft guns with various symbols of aircraft, tanks, bunkers and even ships on their shields. The latter were British destroyers that had been sunk on the African coast by the Afrika Korps with the help of anti-aircraft guns.

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  US flying ace with various launch markings on his machine (1944)

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  Soldiers of the German Air Force in front of the rudder of an aircraft with operational markings; Operation company Luftwaffe zbV

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  Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter aircraft on a field airfield, launch markings on the vertical stabilizer

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  M51 Flakvierling, launch markings on the shield

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  Jagdpanzer 38 Hetzer with launch markings on the barrel

Web links

Commons : Launch marks  - collection of images, videos, and audio files

literature

• Ries, Karl: Markings and camouflages of the Luftwaffe in World War II (Volume 1–4), Verlag Dieter Hoffmann 1971, ISBN 3-8734-1005-2 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Success marks of the German Air Force: Balance on the vertical tail. Air Force Rudder Markings. 1936-1945 - Karl Ries, Ernst Obermaier, Ernst Obermaier - 1970 - ISBN 3873410001 , 9783873410008