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Ukraine - Aircraft Marking

Overview
Airforce Aircraft Marking
Naval Aircraft Marking
Fin Flash Marking

see also:

Overview

Getting independent from Russia in 1917 brought Ukraine to almost cheos, No less then four local air corps were formed, and if you add foriegn corps that joined the "celebration", it is quite understood that no one found the time to put thing in order concering marking. [cos98] report various of marking but I suspect that each report is made upon a single photo and there were much more variations.
There was "Povitrovvi Fl'ot" (Ukrainian People's Republic Air Fleet) and there was the Aviation Regiment of the Ukrainian Galician Army of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic and there was the Army of the Don Republic and there was the Red Ukrainian Air Fleet.
[cos98] report that the Povitrovvi Fl'ot used: white disc with yellow blue rings, yellow outlined trident, yellow (fully colored) trident, chequred 2X2 blue yellow sqare, blue trident on yellow sqare bordered blue. Ukrainian Galician Army reported to have a yellow-blue roundel and yellow skull and bones on white disc bordered blue. Don Republic used blue triangle on white disc. Red Ukrainian Air Fleet used the Red Army marking. Website (<gr.fipu.krasnoyarsk.edu>) show a yellow-blue roundel and national flag as fin flash.
In 1991 Ukraine Air Force (<www.mil.gov.ua>) adopted new markings consist of blue yellow roundel (<www.airliners.net/210034>) and yellow trident on red shild as fin flash (<www.airliners.net/452812>). Those markings are used until today.
However, incorrectly [cos98] show those markings as 1991-1992 and report that 1992-onward marking are yellow shild on blue disc, both as roundel and fin flash. I thing that the base for this mistake is that in 1992, the Ukraine air force sent a MiG-29C for series of displayes and air-shows in USA and Canada. As needed by this occasion, the plane was re-paint in blue-yellow finish and trident-on-shild-on-disc markings (<www.airliners.net/311644>). As far as sources show, this was the only plane that had such markings. As expected, the media was overwhelmed by the sight of the former enemy best fighter come to a such visit, and spread his photos everywhere (I found 12 website show photos of this plane). This was probably enough to come to conclusion that those are the new Ukrainian marking. However, there were 6 years between this visit and [cos98] in which other photos were pubished, including another well painted MiG-29UB that visit the UK in 1996 with proper marking (<www.airliners.net/301495>) so this could be fixed....
Dov Gutterman