1:48 French National Insignia 1938-1942

The roundel of the French Air Force between 1938 and 1942

The three-color disc is among the oldest aerial national insignia of all. The French introduced it as far back as the First World War, and in the form this sheet covers it was worn by machines from the prewar modernization of the French Air Force until the time after the armistice was signed. The insignia is made up of concentric rings in the national colors, completed on the vertical tail by a striped field.

The period the sheet marks out is an extraordinarily dense one for the French Air Force. Into it fall the headlong rearmament of the second half of the 1930s, when the Morane-Saulnier MS.406, Bloch MB.152 and finally Dewoitine D.520 fighters were reaching the units, as well as the short and crushing campaign of May and June 1940. A considerable part of the aircraft then found itself outside the home territory, in North Africa and in the Levant, and carried the insignia on.

Why it pays to reach for a decal

Concentric rings are one of the least rewarding tasks for spraying through a stencil: every shift of a ring is apparent at first glance and the eye rarely forgives a lapse in symmetry. A printed disc has the registration solved and all that is left for the modeler is to settle it in the right place. The thin film holds, on top of that, a sharp boundary between the colors of a kind that cannot be reached with a brush or with an airbrush.

How to work with the sheet

The insignia belong on a smooth glossy base. They are applied onto the covering layer in water, after settling the excess water is pressed out and the surface is gone over with a softener, so that the film creeps into the panel lines. A matte coat finally evens out the sheen and the edge of the film disappears.