It is hoped that any future EU-wide harmonised flag ratio, doubtless imposed to give flags equal ‘flutterability’, will not be squarer than 25+2√46 : 21. This gives the appearance of a manufacturing error. This Army-only flag has the unhappy property that two of the parts of the cross of St Patrick abut at a right-angle to the white edge of the St George, but only just, the extra vertical line having length only 1 part in (5+√34)×25/3 ≈ 90.25793 of the height of the flag. The British Army uses a 5:3 version of the flag, which can be drawn by replacing each of the horizontal 25s in the diagram with 20 (example at /flags/gb.html#35). The red of St Patrick is in four pieces, two larger and two smaller, these respectively each having area 20√5 and 20√5–5 for a total of 80√5–10 ≈ 168.8854382 square units. The larger pieces each have area (335–75√5)/2 the smaller each 445/4–30√5 giving a total blue area of 1115–270√5 ≈ 511.261646 square units, which is slightly more than 1.44% larger than the cross of St George. The blue of the cross of St Andrew is in eight pieces, four larger and four smaller. The red of the cross of St George is of area 504 square units. Then the various parts have areas as follows. The four red parts of the cross of St Patrick should not be pentagons or hexagons, although are often drawn that way.Īnother error, seen more frequently, is the hanging of the Union Jack upside down, of which there are examples in Upside-Down Union Jacks. Two of the quadrilaterals have two sides parallel and two perpendicular the other two have both pairs of non-adjacent sides parallel. In the 2:1 version of the flag (which is what you want unless you really know otherwise) the four red parts of the cross of St Patrick should always be quadrilaterals. The ellipse on the right shows a typical error, in which (wrongly) the cross of St Patrick abuts at a right-angle to the white edge of the cross of St George. The Union Jack is often drawn incorrectly.
(Thanks for drawing my attention to the colours goes to Graham Bartram, who maintains a site with excellent images of UK flags at A frequently seen error The blue should be Pantone 280, approximated here with an RGB setting of 0:0:102, and the red should be Pantone 186, approximated here with 204:0:0. On the flag-pole side fill red the diagonally orientated area of width one fifteenth the height that lies below the diagonals, and on the non-flag-pole side, the diagonally orientated area of width one fifteenth the height that lies above the diagonals.įinally, fill blue everywhere that is both more than one tenth the height away from the diagonals, and more than one fifteenth the height away from the red of the cross of St George. (For clarity the diagram also shows the lines that are apart from the diagonals by only one thirtieth the height.) Start by drawing the diagonals of the whole flag, and then the lines parallel to these that are at a distance of one tenth and one fifteenth the height of the flag. The cross of St Andrew is interchanged with that of St Patrick. The cross of St George is red, and has width equal to one fifth the flag’s height, and a white border of width one fifteenth the height.
The next diagram shows the correct construction: This superposition is quite intricate, and often drawn incorrectly. The flag of the United Kingdom, the Union Jack, is a superposition of the flags of Publication history: only at Usual disclaimer and copyright terms apply.