1:48 US Insignia 1943 to Present

Markings that outlived the war and the Cold War

The shape introduced in the middle of the war proved so legible that American aviation still uses it today. The basis has remained unchanged: a five-pointed star in a circle with rectangular bars at the sides. The only substantial change came at the beginning of 1947, when a horizontal colored stripe was added to the side bars, giving the marking a third national color.

Thanks to that, one sheet can serve an unusually broad collection. It covers piston fighters from the end of the Second World War, the first jet machines, aircraft committed over Korea and over Southeast Asia, and essentially anything that keeps to the established pattern in its national markings. A model from the 1950s and a modern combat aircraft therefore differ in paint and airframe shape, not in the marking.

The sizes on the sheet

You will find the marking on the sheet in nine graduated sizes. The smallest corresponds to a real diameter of twenty inches, the largest is three times that, so the sheet serves large transport and bomber types too.

The breadth of coverage also has a practical effect on how the sheet is used up. Anyone building several machines of one era will reach for the large diameters only rarely and will run out of the small grades first, so it pays to start with the model on which the marking is most prominent.

Before you reach for the scissors

It pays to compare the size of the marking beforehand with a photograph of the period of the particular machine. The size of the markings changed over the years more often than their shape, and an inappropriately large star spoils the impression of an otherwise accurately built model.