That is correct Ian.
In the beggining of the Great War, airplanes were only used for recon work such as artillery and troop spotting.
Many of them did not even have insignias or roundels. Nothing, except the company logo+number of the company
that built them.
Airplanes were still considered a gentlemans sport and not looked at as war machines. Afterall, the airplane
was a completely new invention and was just a few years old. It was ONLY 10 years old! The Wright Brothers
first flew in 1903 and by 1913-1914 this was only for "gentleman flying" and for good adventure.
Only a few months later when some pilots started to take to violent methods at other passing "enemy" airplanes
did they start to use some sort of roundels or insignias to tell the other airplanes that they were friendly. Some of
them used to paint flags of their countries on the airplane also, so the other guy did not shoot at them.
These first "violent encounters" with other airplanes were a little bit crazy. Some pilots shot pistols, some used
2-barrel hunting shotguns and some others even threw bricks. That is correct... they threw BRICKS at each other!
There is even stories of wacky pilots taking to using medieval-like slings and throwing stones. Like David versus Goliath!
So yeah, flags were the first "roundel" insignias.
If you study and look at the diferent markings some countries used, many of them used to have one diferent roundel almost
every year that the Great War was fought in.
For example, like the Germans did. They could not decided which is a better looking cross.
Also, when the United States entered the War, they did not actually have a roundel either. The yexperimented many
diferent ones. Its completely nuts for a skinner to keep track of all of these crazy things. LOL
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Topic: B.E.2c (Read 25471 times)
