\ said:
Nice idea presumably went out of fashion due to the jet innovation.Is there any way to day that they distinguish ie radio signal etc ?
Laurie
Electronic IFF was introduced during WW2 and is obviously a LOT more sophisticated today. In WW2 the equipment carried in the aircraft identified them as friendly to ground controllers, not usually to other aircraft (though I vaguely remember a system fitted to RAF bombers which identified them as friendly to British night fighters late in the war). It was vital for controllers to know where their own fighters were and which plots on their tables (or glass 'walls' for the Germans) were hostile. The only way for pilots to identify aircraft, or to confirm that they had been vectored on to an enemy formation and not a friendly one, was visually.
This is not the case today where friendly aircraft (and by default hostile aircraft) are identified to the pilots electronically and in any case many attacks are launched from beyond visual range and the sort of 'fur ball' dog fights of earlier eras rarely happen. You can see an aircraft at a range of about three miles in good conditions. Even some so called short range air to air missiles today have ranges well beyond that in ideal circumstances.
Throughout WW2 a huge variety of identification markings were painted on the aircraft of all nationalities in an effort to aid identification to friendly forces on the ground as well as in the air.
To shoot down an aircraft with machine guns or cannon usually meant being within 500m of the target and often a lot closer. That is well within visual range and national markings, fuselage bands, spinner spirals, yellow leading edges or any number of other distinctive markings might be seen.
Cheers
Steve