Military Aircraft insignia dates to pre-World War I era, with France and Romania as the first two countries to have designated official military markings.

This book covers every country that I can think of, including a handful of little know countries like Transinistra and some major countries that over the years had multiple military air force insignia (like the US or the Regia Aeronautica).

Each country has a section devoted to the markings, the colors in the insignia and a small description of their aerial assets. In most cases there is a picture of an airframe showing the insignia. Countries like Spain, that had multiple insignia and even civil wars, the book covers the markings of both sides.

All the markings are printed in full color and most of the pictures of the airplanes are in color too (the only exception are period pictures that were originally taken in black and white).

History Brief

During the mid 1950's the U.S. Navy's need for an aircraft that could attack both ground and sea based targets in any weather, day or night, attracted a lot of proposals. In 1956, eight aircraft companies submitted at least twelve designs. Grumman Aerospace A-6 Intruder answered the call, design number 1280 was the winning entry and a contract was issued on March 26,1959. The aircraft was originally designated the A2F1, and the first flight of BUNO 147864 took place on April 19, 1960. The first A6A entered service with VA-42 in March 1963.

Every once in a while a book shows up on the “available for review” list which grabs my interest. This book is one of those. I was able to convince Dave Morrissette to send it to me because I have a personal interest in the KC-97. It was a KC-97 which took me on my first military flight, from Peoria Air National Guard Base to Lackland Air Force Base to begin basic training. I’ve had a lot of rides in various aircraft types since then, but there’s only one first one.

Bill Yenne covers the entire life of the Boeing 367/377 series, from the first airliners to the C-97 to the KC-97, then back to the mature airliner and the mature KC-97, and the last of the series, the Guppies. He does a very good job of tracing the lineage of the series from the B-29 and the B-50. The 367 was the C/KC-97, the 377 was the airliner.