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[Koty]

Hello all 
Having noticed that in some higher quality photos, the text appearing on USAF aircraft appears to be blue rather than black, I have done some digging.

The link below directs you to download a pdf of a tech order 1-1-4, describing how USAF aircraft should be marked, dated 1994.
http://everyspec.com/USAF/USAF-Tech-Manuals/download.php?spec=TO_1-1-4_CHG-6.029193.pdf

Here is a similar document dated 1964:
https://www.f-106deltadart.com/manuals/T.O.%201-1-4%20(1964).pdf

Turns out indeed, for bare metal aircraft as well as high visibility marking on grey, 9/10 cases the text should be blue, in fact using the same shade of "insignia blue" as the stars and bars:


Black is an applicable alternative, but what appears to be black on most photos is due to photography quality making the blue appear much darker than it should be. This regulation pre-dates Korean war, but for Korean war aircraft it appears the colouring was not fully standardised text would be often painted black, sometimes even using colourful highlights for the buzz number. In my opinion most common combination during Korean war would be blue text on horizontal surfaces and black on vertical surfaces.

It is also interesting to note that even though according to the TO the serial number (call number) should be done in code 17038 (black), it is almost exclusively done in 15044 (insignia blue). The impression the text should be universally black in my opinion comes from the black text used when SEA camouflage is being applied since the mid 1960s.











And an example of a really bad photo:
As you can see the text appears black, but so does the blue around the stars.


I hope this has been useful or at least interesting.
Cheers.

[UberDemon]

Both useful and interesting.

[steeldust]

thank you for these observations !