Originally posted by Bodhi
I am not sure Krusty. It seems that the men in the field cared far less about "cut off dates" than did the people making them.
It's kind of like arguing whether the 475th FG aircraft ever had shark's mouthes on their aircraft. Yes they did, because they inherited an awful lot of aircraft from the 39th who did use them. Guys in the field simply could not be bothered to paint over something so trivial.
In the end, the more work we do, and more history I see, the less I am likely to believe a book by someone who never has seen the history, but has read the stuff the "rule makers" pumped out.
The Red Surround to the star and bar was ordered on in June 43 and changed to blue in August 43. If you look at 5th AF 38s as an example, they for the most part never put the red surround on and only a plain white bar was behind the star and blue circle.
The 8th AF had the red and began changing it when the order came down but this wasn't something that happened over night.
To illustrate Bodhi's point.
This is a well known photo of a veteran 8th AF B17G taken in July 1944 Note the replacement panel on the left wing. Red surround to the star and bar. Note the fuselage has the blue surround. The red is still there almost a year after being 'ordered' changed.
As with anything to do with WW2 aircraft markings, unless you have photo proof, or like Bodhi see the bits up close, there are no hard fast rules.
