---
title: Do You Know the Recognition Signal?
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/do-you-know-the-recognition-signal-1940/
description: A grey painted scene shows an anti-aircraft gun crew in a sandbagged pit, one soldier raising an arm toward a flare and aircraft overhead.
section: Collection
---

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3. Do You Know the Recognition Signal?

[![Do You Know the Recognition Signal?, 1940 UK poster: A grey painted scene shows an anti-aircraft gun crew in a sandbagged](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/do-you-know-the-recognition-signal-1940.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/do-you-know-the-recognition-signal-1940.jpg)

# Do You Know the Recognition Signal?

A grey painted scene shows an anti-aircraft gun crew in a sandbagged pit, one soldier raising an arm toward a flare and aircraft overhead, with an inset of the gun firing. The text tells crews to carry a note of the day's recognition signals; the fear-appeal tell is the implied consequence, a firing gun beside a signalling soldier, though no casualty is shown.

## Propaganda techniques used in this poster

[Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/)

## Text on the object

Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
DO YOU KNOW THE
RECOGNITION SIGNAL?

DO NOT TRUST TO MEMORY ALONE. ALWAYS
CARRY WITH YOU A NOTE OF THE RECOGNITION
SIGNALS FOR THE DAY (IN A FORM, OF COURSE,
THAT DISCLOSES NOTHING TO THE ENEMY).

MAY, 1940 | AIR DIAGRAM 1301
ISSUE NO. 1
DATE MAY, 1940
FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

[signature in the picture:] H. R. MILLAR
PRINTED FOR H.M. STATIONERY OFFICE BY JORDISON & CO., LTD., LONDON AND MIDDLESBROUGH. 51-6679.
```

[← 'Dig for Victory' banner across the Royal Exchange, London, used as a Ministry of Information poster site](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/dig-for-victory-royal-exchange-banner-1940/) [Fall in the fire-bomb fighters! (Herbert Morrison) →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/fall-in-the-fire-bomb-fighters-morrison-1940/)

## More propaganda examples that use the same techniques

- [Miniature of Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont, Les Passages d'outremer (BnF Fr. 5594, fol. 19r)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/passages-doutremer-council-of-clermont-colombe-1474/) (France · 1474 · Testimonial, Fear appeal). Content note: Medieval religious imagery and a French text describing alleged killings and captivity of eastern Christians, as used to argue for the First Crusade; the text is shown as written.
- [Anacoana fut pendue sans raison (engraving in Le miroir de la cruelle et horrible tyrannie espagnole)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/anacoana-hanged-miroir-tyrannie-espagnole-1620/) (Dutch Republic · 1620 · Fear appeal, Name-calling). Content note: Engraving of a hanged, bare-breasted Taino woman, burning huts and people being killed by Spanish soldiers.
- [Der Warner (broadsheet lampoon on the Jesuits after Breitenfeld and Rain)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/der-warner-anti-jesuit-broadsheet-1632/) (Holy Roman Empire · 1632 · Scapegoating, Fear appeal)
- [Sans-Culottes, feeding Europe with the Bread of Liberty (James Gillray)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sans-culottes-bread-of-liberty-gillray-1793/) (Kingdom of Great Britain · Jan 12, 1793 · Fear appeal, Name-calling)
- [Proclamation de Sonthonax en créole, Cap-Français (Proclamation of Commissioner Sonthonax in Creole)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sonthonax-proclamation-creole-1793/) (France · Aug 29, 1793 · Fear appeal, Scapegoating). Content note: Colonial-era proclamation on slavery and emancipation in Saint-Domingue; speaks of slaves, whips and 'Nègues' in period terms.
- [Gazette of the United States, "The Jeffersoniad" no. VIII, 14 August 1800](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/gazette-us-jeffersoniad-1800/) (United States · Aug 14, 1800 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Tyrants Prostrate, Liberty Triumphant (pro-Polk cartoon on Dorr), 1844](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/tyrants-prostrate-liberty-triumphant-polk-1844/) (United States · 1844 · Name-calling, Fear appeal). Content note: Speech balloons contain anti-Catholic and nativist wording ('the ruins of Popery') in the mouths of the Whig figures, written by a Democratic cartoonist and shown unaltered.
- [Brolej Žemajčiaj! (Brothers Samogitians!): hand-painted broken-cross poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/brolej-zemajciaj-broken-cross-1862/) (Russian Empire · 1862 · Fear appeal, Transfer)