D-Day Invasion Stripes - Too Pretty? Too "defined" in shape?

Here's a new historical-trivia-you-can-model for you - most "invasion stripes" which were painted the day and night of June 4/5 (when we thought we'd invade June 5 instead of June 6) were brush-painted on (many of them brush-painted on in the dark) and they were nowhere near as neat-and-clean as most modelers give them credit for.

Below, I have photos of guys doing the brush painting, with black stripes slopping over insignia (around the edges) and "straight lines" being anything but.  Certainly useful for dioramas, but also useful for being accurate in D-Day aircraft models on their own.

So, when you do your invasion stripes,you might not want to go for precision unless you have photo evidence to substantiate that precision. I also have one that another modeler "captioned" which may well capture the spirit of the times.


Here are the Erks painting on (slopping on) the invasion stripes in early June - note how they botch up the insignia, and how they couldn't paint a straight line to save their immortal souls ...

 
What they were REALLY saying as they painted the stripes


And yet another example of just how "hand painted" these were:




Not everyone was a slob, but it was still very much hand-painted, with no do-overs ...

 

This one's already painted, but look close - it's not a pretty job ...





 Sometimes it was a group effort - and, as at least a couple of ERKs demonstrate, it could be a laid-back kind of assignment ...


Now here's a "classy" job of invasion striping ...




Even for life magazine, it's clearly a hand-done job, not neat decals.