This one goes out to all those treadheads out there, maybe one of you can help me out. I was looking at some pictures of early war (circa 1940) german armor, and some of the tanks had solid white bands painted on their tops. It seems to be for air recognition, but I only knew of swasticas or national flags used for that, never solid white bands…the pictures don’t have any captions or explanations, so i don’t know if these tanks belong to a particular unit that had a special paint job. Does anybody know of any panzer units that would have used these bands on their armor?
During the Polish Campaign, the Germans used .5 x 1 meter white rectangles painted on the engine decks as air identification symbols. This was often supplemented by a white cross or swastika on the forward turret roof. By the time of the French Campaign, this symbol was in widespread use on all armored vehicles. A white band painted around the circumference of the upper edge of the turret was used during war games exercises to denote “Umpire” vehicles. A black and white checker band was sometimes also used for this purpose.