Aircraft recognition

Aircraft recognition is a visual skill taught to military personnel and civilian auxiliaries since the introduction of military aircraft in World War I. It is important for air defense and military intelligence gathering.

Aircraft recognition generally depends on learning the external appearance of the aircraft, both friendly and hostile, most likely to be encountered. Techniques used to teach this information have included scale models, printed silhouette charts, slide projectors, computer aided instruction and even specially-printed playing cards.

In the United Kingdom, The Royal Observer Corps (ROC) was formed as a defence warning organisation with civilians trained in aircraft recognition and operated primarily as such between 1925 and 1957. Aircraft recognition was first developed between the First and Second World wars when aerial warfare was first recognised as a future threat, after 208 Zeppelin and 435 aircraft raids over London during the First World War. In 1917 Germany had started using fixed-wing bombers, and the number of airship raids diminished rapidly.

To answer this new threat, Major General Edward Bailey Ashmore, a First World War pilot who had later been in command of an artillery division in Belgium, was appointed to devise improved systems of detection, communication and control. The Metropolitan Observation Service was created, covering the London area, known as the London Air Defence Area, and was soon extended to the coasts of Kent and Essex. This led to the establishment of the Observer Corps in 1925.

It was the creed of the British War Department and the Air Ministry, at the start of the war, that accurate recognition of high-flying and fast-moving aircraft was not possible. The sparetime volunteers of the Observer Corps disagreed and between 1938 and 1939 they started developing the skills and training materials to achieve it, on an unofficial basis.

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