Belgium: Air Force flags

Last modified: 2002-11-30 by ivan sache
Keywords: air force ensign | royal air force | raf | colonel | lieutenant colonel | major | flag officer | swords: 2 (white) |
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• Air Force ensign
  • Former ensign
• Rank flags
  • Flag Officer
  • Colonel
  • Lieutenant-Colonel
  • Major
• Belgian section of the Royal Air Force

See also:

• Belgium
• Belgium: Military flags
• Belgium: Aircraft roundels
• Belgium: Air Force Colours and Standards
• Royal Air Force (United Kingdom)

Air Force ensign

from Shipmate, with permission

Former ensign

by Mark Sensen

Flag adopted 25 (fide Pedersen [ped70] or 26 (fide Barraclough [bar] April 1950. Pedersen doesn't give the yellow fimbriation around the roundel.
H. Gresham Carr (1956) [car56] says that the ensign adopted 26 April 1950 had proportions 2:3, the roundel 2/3 of the height, with a yellow border. In the upper hoist a pair of stylized yellow wings charged with a shield ensigned with a crown of the same colour.
In 1953 the proportions became 3:5, the roundel approx. 1/2 of the height, the shield black with a narrow red border and charged with a yellow lion rampant.

Mark Sensen, 28 June 1997 & 7 June 1998

The ensign of the Belgian Air Force was adopted on 4 February 1948 and the yellow fimbriation was removed in 1955. I do not know anything about a relation between the British and Belgian Air Force blue shades. That particular blue shade is common in several Air Force ensigns.

Michel Lupant, 16 December 2000

Rank flags

Flag Officer

by Zeljko Heimer

Square black-yellow-red tricolour with two black lined white swords in saltire in the middle.

Source: Album des Pavillons [pay00]

Zeljko Heimer, 22 February 2001

'Flag Officer' will mean general officers of the Army and Air Force.

Joe McMillan, 28 February 2001

Colonel

by Ivan Sache

Source: Smith [smi75c]

Lieutenant-colonel

by Ivan Sache

Source: Smith [smi75c]

Major

by Ivan Sache

Source: Smith [smi75c]

Can anyone confirm the existence of the three rank flags shown above? I wrote the Belgian Air Force and was told they had no knowledge of them. (This was perhaps two years ago).

Jack Kowalski, 2 March 2001

Belgian section of the Royal Air Force

by Mark Sensen

According to H. Gresham Carr (1956) [car56], the Belgian section of the Royal Air Force used the RAF ensign, but with the British roundel replaced by the Belgian one.

Mark Sensen, 7 June 1998

This was also in the 1953 edition [car53], repeated in the 1971 Barraclough edition but left out of the 1981 Barraclough/Crampton edition [bcr81]. I asked the former General Secretary of the Flag Institute about this, since he used to be in the RAF. His opinion was that this was probably an unofficial flag, but that similar ensigns might have been made by some of the other nationalities that formed RAF squadrons. The four Czechoslovak Squadrons and the four Norwegian Squadrons were RAF squadrons with RAF style squadron badges, but the Polish squadrons flew with the RAF as Polish Squadrons and retained their Polish badges.

David Prothero, 8 June 1998

The Belgian pilots who served the British RAF received on 24 October 1946 as a present a flag of the RAF with the Belgian roundel fimbriated in yellow in lower fly. During their stay in Britain, the Belgian pilots probably flew under the British RAF ensign.

Michel Lupant, 15 June 2000