WWII aircraft marking question

[Flashlarue]

In the photo below of the Piper L-4 airplanes with the white star in the blue circle would indicate this is an early WWII insignia dating the photo to May 28, 1942 to June 29, 1943. This is the only photo of these aircraft I have seen with camouflaged, dark on top and light below, with the wavy up and down design on the sides. It is much like the early USN aircraft color pattern used early in the war. Just about all the photos of the L-4 I have seen are solid green or green with the black and white wing stripes. Does anyone have any history of the AAF using this camouflage?

 

[gwb123]

How unusual. Actually, if you look under the wings, it looks like there is a wavy stripe pattern applied underneath the wing as well. All the more odd.

[Johnny Signor]

Are you sure they're AAF, could be Navy , they used them too and it appears to be light blue over light gray , they used a pattern along that line , try over at this site

J-3Cub.com

Johnny

[rr01]

Are you sure they're AAF, could be Navy , they used them too and it appears to be light blue over light gray , they used a pattern along that line , try over at this site

J-3Cub.com

Johnny

 

You might be right but it looks like they're being guarded by AAF pilots ;-}

[Johnny Signor]

Yeah ,could be , they all appear to be "Officiers" if you look closely at their hat eagles, possibly the Navy was taking them on flights to Observe operations etc ............................ or to meeting from off a ship to a shore area, too bad there's no names of who they are ......................

[Cobrahistorian]

THey're Army airplanes (says so under the wing). There were L-4s painted in desert colors for North Africa. What we're looking at is more than likely tan over light blue. Man, I wish this were a color shot!

 

On a slightly different note, we just installed an L-4J in the US Army Field Artillery Museum on Monday!

[Johnny Signor]

It could say US NAVY under the wings, just not clear enough to make sure , I can barely see the "S" of US let alone "Army" but who knows ........................

[Cobrahistorian]

Looks like the stars have the remnants of a yellow surround too. Slight overpainting with field-applied camo. My hunch is these are Army North Africa birds.

[Flashlarue]

A little bit more I have learned about the photo. I bought the photo in Denton, Texas. Denton is where the liaison flight training was conducted in late 1942 into early 1943. I have also been told these are most likely L-4B due to where the radio mount is located. So these would have been training airplanes stationed at Denton, Texas prior to the school being moved.

[Cobrahistorian]

Well, according to this website (http://www.airfieldsdatabase.com/WW2/WW2%20R27c%20TX-WY.htm) , Denton was a USN field, but explaining the Army personnel is somewhat difficult then....

 

Couple other points to support the AAF idea. Navy Grasshoppers were NE-1 and NE-2 airplanes, NOT L-4s. It may be a semantical argument, but there are differences. The NE-1 was basically a J3 in Navy colors. Neither of those airplanes is an NE-1. The NE-2s were pulled right from a USAAF order and other than Navy radios were identical to AAF birds.

Now, were these stateside Navy trainers, we'd see two distinct pieces of information on each airplane: a Bureau number and "Navy" or "US Navy" on the fuselage near the tail. Both of these tails are completely overpainted, which says to me that this is a theater paint job where they didn't care about getting the right markings on the airplane, they just wanted it painted. Of course, the converse of that could be that they'd just been re-covered and hadn't been painted yet... but the non-standard camouflage paint seems to refute that idea.

The gov't computer I'm on right now won't let me access Joe Baugher's serial number database right now, but correlating the bureau number range for the NE-2 and the date that the star in circle national insignia was in use may also help explain this photo.

[Flashlarue]

Quoting from j3-cub.com

 

"Denton was the primary Liaison pilot school until it was shut down January of 1943 and all Liaison training was moved to Pittsburg, Kansas. The glider training school at Pittsburg was ended and the school began training Liaison pilots Feb, 1943."

[Cobrahistorian]

Ok, cool. So, this may have been at Denton. We can rule them out as Navy airplanes, since it looks like the NE-2s were pulled from 1944 production batches. They're early L-4s. Is anyone else seeing a yellow border around the star that's been overpainted?

 

Jon

[ram957]

Try contacting The Liaison Aircraft Forum @ http://lbirds.forumotion.com/

If their members are as knowledgeable and helpful as our members are you may find the answer !

[Flashlarue]

No border around the Stars.

[Cobrahistorian]

Play with the brightness and contrast. There's a border on both the near wing star and Wanda's fuselage. In the rear airplane, the area around the circle is significantly darker with the contrast adjusted.

 

Think about this:

 

1) If this were Denton, TX and this was a primary Liaison Pilot training base, why are they camouflaging primary trainers? The whole point of a primary trainer was to be as conspicuous as possible. Plus, the camouflage paint job done on a factory painted airplane would be OD over Neutral Grey with Medium Green splotches on the leading and trailing edges. This is clearly a set of far different colors. If you look at the airplane in the background with the open door, you can see a far darker color. My hunch is, that's OD.

 

2) If they were trainers, why are there no buzz numbers or tail numbers on them? That's a prerequisite for trainer aircraft so that people can report on their position, if they're doing something wrong, etc.

 

3) The terrain there is hard to tell, but that looks like desert. I drive by Denton fairly frequently. It's semi-arid, but not like that. Denton AAF had a sod strip.

[Flashlarue]

Photoshopped front L-4. I do not see any circles around the stars. This is an early production L-4B with the bungee cord rear wheel. I haven't found anyone on any of the old time Piper Cub sites who has an explaination for the camo paint jobs. They don't know of any authorization for this kind of camo on the liaison planes

 

[Cobrahistorian]

Flash,

 

Here's the adjusted contrast. You can clearly see the contrast of a surround on the left side of the fuselage star.

 

[locobuster]

I'm with Jon on this one, there once was a yellow surround on that aircraft. Also, it appears it was named WANDA JOE, if you look closely you can see the J and E behind the man at the left. I'd say North Africa as well...

 

 

Just my two cents

Syd

[Cobrahistorian]

Not for nothin, but the chances of nose art like that being on an early war stateside trainer is slim. Plus, how can you possibly tell that the tailwheel there has bungees and not springs? From that distance an L-4J's tailwheel looks the same. I was looking at ours today.

 

If the yellow surrounds are painted over here and there's no bars on the national insignia, this photo would have had to be taken between January and June 1943.

 

Jon

[Flashlarue]

I think the name is more likely WANDA LEE

[Johnny Signor]

I'm still leaning towards some type of navy paint scheme on at least the on in the foreground .

[38Driver]

First thought is it resembles the paint schemes used on Army anti-sub patrol aircraft. I know early on just about anything that could fly was off the coast looking for subs. I remember reading the account of a PTO 38 pilot where he mentioned that while still in training in BT-13s his instructor took them out looking for subs.

 

Seems like I remember Civil Air Patrol planes doing the same. Could be the L4s were pressed into service and got that camo.

[38Driver]

This is found in Dana Bell's book "Air Force Colors-Volume 2 1942-45"

 

I really think what the L4s have is similar to the O47 camo but it also might be OD on top. How far is Denton from the Gulf. Could they have been flying over water?

[Cobrahistorian]

Denton's about 400 miles from the Gulf. It's north of Dallas.