I have noticed several different stars on WWII US vehicles(simple star, with ring, with broken ring). What do they imply? Just curiosity, really.

Hi Matt,


Nothing, really. The broken circles were, IIRC, painted via stencil.

The circles were, because, from a distance, in some light, our lil' star could look like the white outlind Balkancruz.

We started the war with Operation Torch with yellow starts and blue vehicle numbers. The starts didn't keep friendly fire from happening so they were embellished with stripes and bands around the turrets, painted white, made bigger, and eventually circled.

As far as I know nothing was signified by the circle or segmented circle. However, those do seem to date vehicles. I do not know what date they were used, but having them on a vehicle would preclude that model from being in, say, an April 1943 diorama.

For instance, USAAF, to make our national insignia look less like the bad guys, first removed the red dot from the center (Americans in the Pacific saw only the red dot and though, "Japanese!". The blue circle with a white star, from a distance and in certain atmospherics, looked like the Balkencruz, so USAAF ordered the bars on each side. Before the bars, USAAF decided to make our star-circle less nazi, a 3" red border was applied. (The best looking national insignia we ever had on aircraft, before or since. ) That was in April or May 1943. But it was deemed not quite right and an order was issued in October 1943 to cease applying the red outline. Some planes survived to VJ Day with them but after Oct. 1943, they were not applied anymore (except perhaps because "There's always someone who didn't get 'the word'").

So a red bordered airplane insignia could be justified through VJ Day, but not before summer 1943.

Hope that helps.

I figured it had something to do with dates. Very informative. Thank you.

Hi matt,

I just remembered this site. It refers to the blue markings with Tech Order number and date, too: U.S. Military Vehicle Markings. I'll look for info about the star.

The circled stars started to be used after the North African campaign. Not all units used them. There are pictures of vehicles up to the end of WW2 without them. In Sicily and the early Italian campaign the circles were sometimes painted yellow, red or blue. As stated above the circles were introduced because the plain stars could be mistaken for the white outlined German cross at long range. Source for the above is the Squadron/Signal book US Armor Camouflage and Markings World War II by Jim Mesko.

Here's basically the same question asked on Armorama in 2008: http://armorama.com/forums/118620

This is good and I think includes some WWII Army Regulations AR-850-5 (1942, 1943, 1944) pages:
US WWII Vehicle
Markings

This page has some great images from period magazines:

Marking of 5-Pointed star on vehicles

Thank you for all of the responses. I mainly do Sherman's. This will help with photo research to place the time frame.

Very informative thread, thanks!