 In most cases the stripes were painted on by the ground crews; with only a few hours' notice, few of the stripes were "masked".As a result, depending on the abilities of the "erks" (RAF nickname for ground crew), the stripes were often far from neat and tidy.The stripes for this two-day deception operation in 1943 were black from the wing tip to a position on the wing where the chord is 5 feet, then four bands of alternating white and black.