Would it be safe to assume that if a plane was in a unit previous to the order to paint the stripes, and that plane was part of D-Day and shown in photos with the partially removed stripes that it would have at one time had been painted with the full stripes? Im thinking that if it had the fusalge stripes then it must have had the full stripes previous to the order to start removal. Any help on this matter would be great.
Yes…
If the aircraft was subject to application of invasion stripes and was in theater and assigned to an operational unit when the order was given for their application, it would have had full stripes. The only exceptions that I’ve heard of pertained to some recce aircraft which had stripes on the undersurfaces only.
Not necessarily.
The first removal or painting over of stripes applied to upper surfaces only. Then the order to remove ALL stripes from wings was given. At this point, most aircraft would have already had the stripes removed from all uppersurfaces, but some aircraft still retained full fuselage stripes.
So it was possible to have seen aircraft with full fuselage stripes and only lower wing stripes as well as aircraft with full fuselage stripes with no wings stripes at all. But in most cases it seems that by the time the order was made to remove all wing stripes, the upper fuselage stripes had been removed, ultimately leaving only lower fuselage stripes on many aircraft which had previously worn full stripes.
However, there’s the issue of replacement aircraft which may or may not have had full stripes applied. This would have depended upon when they arrived in theater and/or when they were assigned to an operational unit. If they came in before the first removals took place, they may have had full stripes applied, even if they hadn’t participated in operations of June 6th. If they came in after the first removals began, they might have any combination of partial stripes, depending upon the exact timeframe and perhaps the unit involved. I’d think that application of stripes to replacement aircraft would have been handled at depot level, but it may have been left to the receiving units in some cases.
Quite often, if full stripes had originally been present and then partially removed, there would be some trace of the removed portions left behind. But such traces are not always easy to detect in photos and this might make it difficult to differentiate between an aircraft which had full stripes partially removed and a replacement aircraft which may have had only partial stripes applied to begin with.
Fade to Black…
Thx Blackwolf thats what I was thinking. Sorry about the clumsily worded question but I found the answer I needed anyway. Thx again.