C-47 markings - A (probably boring) thread:

Marking a combat aircraft with "victories" or bombing missions in WWII was not uncommon, and given the myriad of jobs they could perform, Troop Carrier Groups also looked at ways of marking aircraft to display the missions that any /1

particular aircraft had performed. Bearing in mind, that some of these aircraft had flown from the States to North Africa, gone through HUSKY, GIANT, NEPTUNE, MARKET, DRAGOON, REPULSE, and VARSITY whilst also flying supply, and evacuation flights almost daily, those markings /2

could practically cover the skin of an aircraft. The 52nd Troop Carrier Wing, who had operated from North Africa in 1943 until wars-end, authorized markings that could be applied to aircraft to represent the missions it had flown.

Bear in mind, that unlike many of the other /3

branches of the USAAF in WWII, a C-47 Crew Chief flew onboard during missions and essentially he "owned" the aircraft. The Aircrew could, and did change, but the Crew Chief remained the same. Therefore the markings do represent the history of the aircraft and as such it's/4

Crew Chief, and not the aircrew.

Let's take a look at an aircraft long in the tooth, with lots of missions to its name.

"Starbuck" was an aircraft of the 14th Troop Carrier Squadron, 61st Troop Carrier Group, and during its time stationed in the UK it was based with the /5

Group at RAF Barkston Heath, in Lincolnshire. As we can see, it's been around. Spefically for those of us who are so inclined, she is #42-24204, built by Douglas as a C-47A-50-DL at their Long Beach plant.

The first marking, the one every Troop Carrier aircraft wants, is the /6

Paradrop. This denotes that it has carried out a COMBAT Paradrop, as part of a live Operation. As we can see, Starbuck has done a few.

We think the image of Starbuck dates to just after the various MARKET operations, so we can tell from that what missions it will have /7

flown, plus of course we can look at records. Starbuck flew two drops over Sicily, two over Italy, the paradrop into Normandy, and finally (in terms of markings shown here) the first Paradrop (British Paras) into Holland as part of MARKET.

Between the 5th and 6th Paradrop /8

Markings we can also see this marking.

This Marking denotes an Aerial Resupply mission (Paradropped supplies) which in the case of Starbuck was Mission FREEPORT on June 7th in which it dropped supplies to the 82nd Airborne Division.

Starbuck was severely damaged, and was /9

grounded for a number of days as a result of heavy flak during the FREEPORT mission (bear in mind, the flak on FREEPORT was considered almost universally to have been much worse than the June 6th Paradrop) but was repaired and was back in the air to start supply flights /10

when needed.

Next up we have this following Markings. These denote Freight Hauls, in other words aircraft loaded with supplies, flown to airstrips near to the front. For every 5 missions flown, the "Boxcar" is completed, but initially, freight missions are marked with a bar, /11

therefore we can see that Starbuck has carried out 11.

Below that we then have this marking, or in Stabucks case a variation of, meaning Air Evacuation Flights. Typically, a C-47 would never fly anywhere empty unless training, so in many cases supply flights OUT became /12

Medivac flights IN. Again, we can see that Starbuck has carried out 14 Medivac flights.

Below that we have these markings, which denote freight missions flown from AFRICA (camel) and SICILY (Donkey). The prop obscures all the bars but we can tell that Starbuck did at least /13

19 and 21 respectively.

The final marking on Starbuck is this one, which denotes that it carried out a COMBAT Glider tow mission. These two indicate Glider tows carried out during MARKET, in September 1944.

There is one more marking, but this would only be applied to /14

pathfinder aircraft and I'm yet to find an image of an aircraft with this marking actually applied.

Additionally, these markings were "authorised" for 52nd Troop Carrier Wing aircraft, but varied considerably on aircraft of other Wings, even aircraft within the 52nd.

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These markings were by no means universally adopted. The 316th Troop Carrier Group aircraft carried virtually no mission markings, and no nose art. The 314th appear not to have adopted mission markings, and the 313th appear to have adopted variations of the above.