Presentation (Army/Air Force)
The early Army aircraft had large black serials marked on the fin or rudder, and in 1917 it was usual to prefix the serial with SC for signal corps, or later AS for aerial service. Later, the prefixes were not always marked, and were eventually dropped. From 1942, the serial number was applied to the fin (or boom if a helicopter), and the first digit of the fiscal year would be removed. The serial would not be allowed to be less than four digits (for example B-45 serial number 47-007 was marked 7007), but there was no upper limit (for example YP-59A 42-108783 was marked as 2108783).
When the original fiscal year of a serial became ten years earlier than the current fiscal year, the tail number was often prefixed with a zero, for example 0-16717 instead of 16717 for UH-1H fiscal serial 66-16717. This was for disambiguation purposes, to avoid confusion with tail numbers for later fiscal years. The practice was generally abandoned in the 1980s. The notion that it was O for Obsolete is a widespread myth.
In 1956, the fin serials were changed from a minimum of four digits to five digits and in 1957 all serials were limited to five digits (for example KC-135R 58-0001 is marked as 80001) the system is still in use.
In 1969, camouflaged tactical aircraft were marked with modified presentation with the fiscal year followed by the last three digits of the serial number. Also, the letters AF were often added as a prefix or nearby.
Whatever the serial presentation on the fin, the full fiscal serial is always presented in a technical data block, which is normally on the port (left) side near the cockpit. Oftentimes a portion of the aircraft serial number is also painted on the aircraft nose (as is done with helicopters) or on the nose landing gear door (as is done on fighters and bombers) to help ground and air crew personnel speedily identify a certain aircraft as it approaches while taxiing into or out of parking spots or elsewhere around an airfield.
Read more about this topic: United States Military Aircraft Serials
Famous quotes containing the words presentation and/or air:
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—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“A multitude of little superfluous precautions engender here a population of deputies and sub-officials, each of whom acquits himself with an air of importance and a rigorous precision, which seemed to say, though everything is done with much silence, “Make way, I am one of the members of the grand machine of state.””
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