First markings on German aircraft

On 28 September 1914, according to the British chronicle of the war, clear identification markings on German aircraft were noted for the first time. They were a black cross with flared arms, modelled on the Iron Cross, usually painted on a white square field on the wings, fuselage and rudder.

In the first weeks of the war the aircraft of both sides usually carried no national markings. Soldiers on the ground, unable to tell their own machines from the enemy’s, often fired at every aircraft that appeared over their heads. Airmen of all armies fell victim to such friendly fire. The German command therefore ordered in September 1914 that all military aircraft be marked with a black cross. The exact date of the order is uncertain, and the first crosses were painted in very different ways: their shape, size and placing often depended on the painters in individual units, and the white background was sometimes left out.

The Allies took a similar path. The French marked their aircraft with a tricolour roundel with a blue centre, a white ring and a red outer edge. According to some sources it had been provided for in regulations even before the war, but it was painted widely only in the first months of the fighting. The British Royal Flying Corps at first painted the Union Flag on its aircraft, but from a distance the cross of St George was easily mistaken for the German cross. From 11 December 1914 the standard marking of British aircraft therefore became a roundel modelled on the French one, but with the order of colours reversed: a red disc in the centre, a blue ring on the outside. The new marking was adopted gradually and became fully universal only in 1915.

National markings on military aircraft have survived to this day. In 1918 the Germans replaced the cross with flared arms with a simpler straight-armed Balkenkreuz, and the aircraft of France and Britain carry the roundels of both countries in little-changed form. The Polish equivalent of such a marking is the red-and-white chequerboard, introduced in 1918.