Howdy all. I recently acquired this plate at a consignment shop for $4. I’ve done research on it, but so far I’ve found nothing definitive about what it is or what it’s worth. Here’s what I do know. The writing says, in effect, “something Northern Air Squadron.” It isn’t clear what the ‘something’ is, and the syntax of the Kanji seems improper for both Japanese and Chinese. The colors along with the double-eagle fit with those of the Austro-Hungarian flag from WW2, and that along with the 9 stars (for 9 Axis countries) leads me to believe it was some sort of Axis insignia. However, I recently came across this, an insignia for the Chinese Air Force:
I’ve also seen a couple of Allied things with 9 stars as well.
Anyways, I figured I’d post all this in hopes that someone here would either recognize the insignia, or have some idea where I should proceed with my research of the plate. Thanks a lot.
I think in terms of trying to identify the plate based on the colour scheme, Beer Penguin, you were looking at the wrong WW1 empire: take a look at the flag for Russia, 1914.
This page has links to various eagle symbols used in the last few hundred years. I don’t think it’ll help much, but it might spark something off. God luck with your hunt!
Hey, thanks. Yeah, I’d seen both of those. The double-eagle insignia was pretty common all over Eastern Europe and Asia, so I’ve pretty much given up trying to identify it based on the eagle.
Are you sure the plate dates from the World War 2 era, Beer Penguin? The eagle symbol itself looks a bit too recent (unless you’re dealing with the propoganda-style of graphics that came out of, say, Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.) Was that style used in the East Asian countries at that time?
And no, I’m not sure it’s WW2, it just seemed that way to me. It’s definitely old though, you can see in the pictures that the paint has started to decompose with age.
I am not an expert, but the style is much more like US military unit insignia, than WW2 German/Italian/Japanese insignia. This may be a post-war copy or imitation of US insignia, or the insignia of a post-war Japanese Self-Defense Force unit.
