Dutchy, I found this on a page in referencing tail numbers. Here is what it says in regards to your question. I am also listing the link to the site, as you may find the rest interesting, if you have not been to it before.
http://home.att.net/~jbaugher/usafserials.html
This is excerpt from opening page about your question:
The Display of Serial Numbers on Aircraft
By 1914, when the Army first began to acquire tractor-engined aircraft, the official serial number began to be painted in large block figures on both sides of the fuselage or on the rudder. These numbers were so large that they could be easily seen and recognized from a considerable distance. At the time of American entry into the First World War, the large numbers were retained on the fuselage and sometimes added to the top of the white rudder stripe. By early 1918, the letters S.C. (for \"Signal Corps\") were often added as a prefix to the displayed serial number. When the Army Air Service was created in May of 1918, the letters SC were replaced by A.S. (for \"Air Service\"). In July of 1926, the Army Air Service was renamed the Army Air Corps, and the serial number prefix became A.C. for \"Air Corps\".
By late 1924, the fuselage serial numbers began to get smaller in size, until they standardized on four-inch figures on each side of the fuselage. This remained so until 1932. In 1926, the words \"U.S. Army\" were added to the fuselage number, and in 1928 the manufacturer's name and the Army designation was added to the display. Between 1924 and 1929, it was also common practice to add the manufacturer's name and the Army designation to each side of the rudder, but this was not always done.
The three-line fuselage data block was reduced in size to one-inch characters in 1932 and placed on the left hand side of the fuselage near the cockpit. It is still displayed there in the present day.
Beginning in January of 1942, the serial number of most Army aircraft was painted in eight-inch numbers on the vertical tail (whenever possible). This number became known as the tail number, for obvious reasons. Since military aircraft were at that time not expected to last more than ten years, the first digit of the fiscal year number was omitted in the tail number as was the AC prefix and the hyphen. For example, Curtiss P-40B serial number 41-5205 had the tail number 15205 painted on its rudder and Curtiss P-40K serial number 42-11125 had the tail number 211125 painted on the rudder. Since the Army (later Air Force) used the last four digits of the tail number as a radio call sign, for short serial numbers (those less than 100), the tail number was expanded out to four digits by adding zeros in front of the sequence number. For example, 41-38 would have the tail number written as 1038.
Consequently, in most situations for a World War II-era aircraft where the tail number is visible, you can deduce the serial number simply by putting a dash after the first digit, prefixing a 4, and you automatically have the serial number.
In the 1950s, many airplanes left over from the World War II era were still in service, exceeding their expected service lives of less than 10 years. In order to avoid confusion with later aircraft given the same tail number, these older aircraft had the prefix 0 and a dash added in front of the tail number to indicate that they were over 10 years old. It was hoped that this would avoid confusion caused by duplication of tail numbers between two aircraft built over ten years apart. However, this was not always done, and it was not always possible uniquely to identify an aircraft by a knowledge of its tail number. This practice was eventually discontinued when people started refering to the 0 as being an Oh, standing for Obsolete.
For a while during the 1960s, it was common practice to expand the tail number to a minimum of 5 digits, and even sometimes to cut down the tail number to five digits by deliberately omitting the fiscal year digit and one or more of the first digits of the sequence number. This practice lead to a lot of confusion.
There were some cases in which a long serial number such as 64-14841 would be presented on the tail as 14841, with both fiscal year digits omitted. Once again, this practice led to a lot of confusion.
Camouflage began to reappear on USAF aircraft during the Vietnam War, and this led to a change in tail number presentation. The letters \"AF\" were added directly above the last two digits of the fiscal year, followed by the last three digits of the sequence number. The three-digit sequence number has a height of the AF and fiscal year letters combined and is sometimes called the \"large\" component of the tail number. For example, F-4E serial number 67-0288 had the tail number 67(small) 288 (large). This could of course lead to confusion, since aircraft 67-1288, 67-2288, etc would have exactly the same tail numbers as 67-0288 under this scheme. This would not ordinary cause a whole lot of difficulty unless of course some of these larger serial numbers also happened to be F-4Es (which they were not). Unfortunately, the system was not always consistent--for example F-4D serial number 66-0234 had a tail number that looks like this: 60(small) 234(large). It appears as if this number was obtained by omitting the first digit of the fiscal, and combining the remaining \"6\" with the \"0234\". Consequently, one often has to do a lot of educated guessing in order to derive the aircraft serial number from a knowledge of its tail number, and a knowledge of the aircraft type and sometimes even the version is required. I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has noted different tail number presentations on recent USAF aircraft.
However, Air Mobility Command and USAF Europe aircraft still display the previous format for the tail number, with all digits being the same size and the first digit being the last digit of the Fiscal Year and the remaining 4 digits being the last 4 digits of the sequence number. There is no AF displayed, just the name of the command a couple of feet above it. AMC regulations state that the tail number must be the last five digits of the serial number. If the serial number does not have five significant characters at the end, the last digit of the fiscal year becomes the first character, and zeroes are used to fill up the space to make five digits. This would make 58-00001 apear as 80001. In those rare cases in which the Air Force purchased more than 10,000 aircraft in a single fiscal year (1964 was such a year), aircraft with serial numbers greater than 10,000 would have both digits of the fiscal year omitted--for example the tail number of 64-14840 is 14840, not 44840. An exception was the tail number of EC-130H serial number 73-1583, which had its tail number displayed as 731583, i.e., the full serial number without the hyphen. Again, I would like to hear from anyone who has seen different types of serial number displays on Air Mobility Command aircraft.
Buzz Numbers
In the years immediately following World War 2, many USAAF/USAF aircraft used markings that would make it possible to identify low-flying aircraft from the ground. This was intended to discourage the unsafe practice of pilots of high-performance aircraft making low passes (colloquially known as \"buzzing\") over ground points. Consequently, these numbers came to be known as buzz numbers.
The system used two letters and three numbers, painted as large as practically feasible on each side of the fuselage and on the underside of the left wing. The two letter code identified the type and model of the aircraft, and the three digits consisted of the last three numbers of the serial number. For example, all fighters were identified by the letter P (later changed to F), and the second letter identified the fighter type. For example, the buzz number code for the F-86 Sabre was FU, for the F-100 Super Sabre it was FW. The buzz number for F-100A 53-1551 was FW-551, the buzz number for F-86D 53-1020 was FU-020.
On occasion, two planes of the same type and model would have the same last three digits in their serial numbers. When this happened, the two aircraft were distinguished by adding the suffix letter A to the buzz number of the later aircraft, preceded by a dash.
The system was in wide use throughout the 1950s, but was gradually phased out during the 1960s. The last use of buzz numbers was in 1971.
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