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During the battle of Yavin, it seems lke every Rebel pilot's helmet has a different pattern:

Luke: Rebel insignia in red

Red Leader:unknown graphic design

John D: Solid red

Red Four: circle pattern

Biggs: Gold/black check pattern

Wedge: solid dark gold

Gold Three: Same as Luke, but adds shadows

Gold Four: Black target pattern

Gold Leader: Black grid pattern

Porkins: Rebel Insignia in gold, with red background pattern



Do these patterns mean anything? Or are Rebel pilots able to decorate their helmets any way they want?

The X-wing novels would seem to indicate that the pilots have free reign over their helmets.

Starfighters of Adumar, p.234 wrote:His helmet lay in the pilot's seat. He picked it up to put it on, then noticed the decorations upon it. Recently dried up paint in gold on the dark red surface showed up as a succession of delta-shaped wedges, the decorative motif Wedge had added to most of the helmets he'd worn throughout his career. "Who did this?" he asked.

The helmets were rather old ones.

In the Visual Dictionary you can see that one of them has some signs back from the Clone Wars.

On the other hand every pilot paint their kills on the helmet not just on their ship...

The Rebel Alliance was a rather rag-tag assembly during that point, and I don't think that personal decorations mattered that much as long it didn't interfere with overall coherency.