In 1939, there were two aircraft type marking systems in the United States Armed Forces, Army and Navy. Thanks to this, it happened that the same aircraft received both designations. In addition, aircraft manufacturers also used their own internal type designation systems.
Army Air Forces
The Material Division, renamed the Air Material Command from 1942, was the institution indirectly responsible for the Army Air Corps type designation system. The system designation was assigned to the aircraft most often at the moment when there was an official order for development, a prototype, or even a series.
The basic type designation was a combination of letters and numbers. The letter indicated the designation of the aircraft and the serial number followed the dash. But the whole system was much more complicated.
The letters may have appeared before the basic type designation:
- X – Prototype, eg XP-46
- Y – pre-production machines, eg YP-37
The basic type designation was followed by a letter distinguishing the version and then, after the dash, another one or two-digit series resolution number. At the very end, after another dash, there were two more letters that distinguished individual manufacturers and their production plants.
As an example, we can use Lockheed P-38L-5-LO:
- P – Airplane category
- 38 – serial number
- L – Version resolution
- 5 – series resolution
- LO – Designation of the manufacturer and its plant (in this case, Lockheed, based in Burbank, California)
Designation of individual categories:
| Designation | Category | Category description | Another combination |
| A | Attack | Attack and fighter aircraft | |
| B | Bomber | Bomber planes | |
| C | Cargo | Cargo planes | |
| F | Photo(Rec) | Reconnaissance aircraft | |
| G | Glider | Gliders | CG-Cargo Glider TG-Trainer Glider |
| H | Helicopter | Helicopters | |
| L | Liasion | Light connecting, observation and reconnaissance aircraft | |
| O | Observer | Heavier multi-seat observation and reconnaissance aircraft | |
| P | Pursuit | Fighter planes | |
| Q | Practice flying targets | QP-Fighter aircraft designated as a training flying target | |
| T | Trainer | Training and school airplanes | PT-Primary Trainer BT-Basic Trainer AT-Advanced Trainer |
| U | Utility | Auxiliary aircraft |
Markings of some of the most prominent manufacturers:
| Company | Designation | Place of production, branch |
| Boeing | BE | Seattle, Washingthon |
| Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft | CO CF VN |
San Diego, Kalifornie Fort Worth, Texas Nashville, Tennessee |
| Curtiss-Wright Corporation, Airplane Division | CU | Buffalo, New York |
| Douglas | DT DE |
Tulsa, Oklahoma El Segundo, Kalifornie |
| Ford | FO | Willow Run, Michigan |
| Lockheed | LO | Burbank, Kalifornie |
| Martin | MA MO |
Middle River-Baltimore, Maryland Omaha, Nebraska |
| North American | NA NT |
Inglewood, Kalifornie Dallas, Texas |
| Republic | RA RE |
Farmingdale, New York Evansville, Indiana |
| Stinson | ST | Nashville, Tennessee |
| Vultee-Stinson (Convair) | VW | Wayne, Michigan |
When the air force became completely independent not long after the war, the type designation changed, and much later, only in the 1960s, the system was also unified with the Navy’s aircraft.
Naval Air Force and Marine Corps Air Force
The Bureau of Aeronautics was responsible for the technical side of the armament and thus also for the marking system. Here, too, it should have been possible to recognize the destination and manufacturer of the aircraft from the markings, but obviously at the expense of clarity. In this system, the first letter indicated the designation of the aircraft, followed by a number indicating the order of the type in a category from a particular manufacturer. The next letter distinguished the manufacturer, and the hyphen was followed by a one-digit number or another letter to differentiate the versions.
The Grumman F6F-3 will serve as an example:
- F – category designation
- 6 – serial number of the manufacturer’s type in the category
- F – manufacturer’s resolution
- 3 – version resolution
If it was the first type of the manufacturer in the given category, the serial number was completely omitted as for example with the SBD-3 and only the number at the end remained to differentiate the version. A special situation also occurred in the case of licensed production of the aircraft by another manufacturer, because then the designation changed from the ground up. The Grumman F4F Wildcat will serve as an example. As its production gradually moved to the General Motors plants, the designation of Wildcats was changed to FM-1.An extreme case was the Vought F4U Corsair, where there were even two licensed manufacturers. Brewster-built aircraft were designated F3A, while Goodyear aircraft were designated FG-1.In addition, the last serial Corsairs from the second half of the 1940s were newly classified as attack aircraft and, although they were still manufactured by the original Vought company, they bore the new AU-1 designation instead of the F4U. In the case of prototypes, the letter X was added before the type designation, as in the case of the XF4U aircraft.
Category distinction:
| Designation | Kategory | Category description |
| A | Attack | Attack aircraft |
| B | Bomber | Bomber aircraft (including dive bombers). This category did not include fighter aircraft capable of carrying bombs. |
| F | Fighter | Fighter planes |
| N | Training planes | |
| P | Patrol | Long range patrol aircraft |
| R | Transport planes | |
| S | Scout | Reconnaissance aircraft |
| T | Torpedo | Torpedo planes |
Categories also merged and intermingled in various ways, mostly according to the current specifications.
Here are some examples:
- PB (Patrol-Bomber) – patrol bomber
- TB (Torpedo-Bomber) – torpedo bomber
- SB (Scout Bomber) – reconnaissance bomber
Examples of manufacturer designations:
| Company | Designation | Comment |
| Brewster | A | |
| Boeing | B | |
| Curtiss | C | |
| Douglas | D | In the years 1943-1947 it was also the start-up company McDonnell. These were FD-1 (later FH-1) Phantom fighters |
| Grumman | F | |
| Goodyear | G | |
| McDonnell | H | |
| North American | J | |
| Bell | L | |
| Martin | M | It was also a General Motors company, after it began to produce licensed aircraft during the war |
| Northrop | N | He also used the designation shortly before the Seversky war, and only for a single experimental type |
| Ryan | R | |
| Stearman | S | |
| Vought | U | |
| Lockheed | V | The letter O was also used in the pre-war period |
| Convair, Consolidated | Y |
This system was abandoned only with the aforementioned unification of type designations with the USAF. An interesting paradox is that the direct war rival of the United States, which was the Japanese Naval Air Force, used a similarly complex system of marking its aircraft.
source:
http://www.fronta.cz/kratky-prehled-typoveho-oznaceni-americkych-vojenskych-letadel-v-obdobi-1939-1945