Aye Doug, it was just in this case they used the ? marking as they couldn't prove the exact origins of the plane. It was on the placard facing the Hart if memory serves
I'm not sure about that. If it was written on the placard I must have missed it. Here's the full quote from the link I posted.
Curtiss Kittyhawk Mk. IV
112 Squadron, Royal Air Force
pilot: Sergeant G.F. Davis
Cutella, Italy, April 1944
Here is the Mk.IV Kittyhawk (P-40N) of 112 Sqn, as operated from April to June 1944 in Italy. The main colour scheme and markings are basically of the perfectly standard desert style finish, but with two things worthy of note. The upper surface camouflage colours are reversed on this aircraft, which probably indicates that it has been repainted from its original USAAF style of camouflage and hence the dark and light areas are where they should really be rather than the other way round as happened when Dark Earth/Dark Green aircraft simply had their green areas repainted with Mid Stone.
The second thing is the use of the query punctuation mark as an individual aircraft ident marking; the use of such symbols and shapes (such as, eg, colons, semi-colons, and diamonds) was not unusual in Italy when a squadron had more than 26 aircraft on strength, and the use of "?" was the most common, even at times in the UK itself. Indeed, the "?" mark was often used to indicate the aircraft of the squadron commander, though not always so as in the case of this aircraft. Once again this is painted over the top of the serial number, FX740.
This aircraft again also has British radio equipment with no wire ariels, just the mast behind the canopy and whip on the rear fuselage.
by Hagar » Sat Jan 15, 2005 4:52 am 
