Pretty much all the combatants of WWII used trickery and other forms of deception to convey that they possessed more military machinery than they did in reality. The techniques ranged from staged propaganda photos to presenting prototypes as production models. Press releases also emphasized massive production numbers that were far from reality.

In the case of Japan, they did not really use much of repainting of their aircraft for this purpose. The painting standards for both the IJN and IJA (navy and army respectively) were a mixture of homogeneous regulations and haphazard painting in the field. Early war IJN aircraft had a paint finish that was arguably among the highest quality among combatants, but standards soon slipped to where IJN and IJA aircraft were flying without a proper primer coat. This led many Japanese aircraft to lose large swaths of their paint and exposing the bare metal underneath.

The major form of trickery the Japanese used for their aircraft was how its navy dealt with serial numbers. Every IJN aircraft had dataplates within the cockpit and stenciled onto the fuselage listing the aircraft's data (subtype, manufacturer, date manufactured, weight, etc.). Japanese aircraft manufacturers used a complicated system of enciphering the serial number with a series of false digits obscuring the real number. Investigators of planes shot down at Pearl Harbor were initially confused because the serial numbers on these aircraft indicated there were thousands of these planes in service, which was not the case. It was only when enough IJN aircraft had been shot down and their dataplates collected was Allied air intelligence able to understand the full system.

The belligerent that used disinformation the most though was Germany. The vagaries of German aircraft manufacture in the Third Reich meant that German companies would often construct an array of prototypes and quasi-vanity products. Both Ernst Heinkel and Willy Messerschmitt were notorious for constructing aircraft that were ill-suited for mass production but broke various records. Nonetheless, the German propaganda machine did publish photos of such machines and presented them as operational machines. The Heinkel 100, for example, was a failed competitor to the Bf 109. The Germans painted and repainted the few He 100s with a variety of fictitious squadron badges and posed them in shots on an airfield as the He 113. The ruse was so successful that RAF Fighter Command chief Hugh Dowding postwar dispatch on the Battle of Britain indicated that the Luftwaffe used the He 113 as a high-altitude fighter. In reality, the few He 100s were sitting outside the Heinkel factories as defense fighters and never fired a shot in anger. Messerschmitt likewise had their Me 209 dolled up with a fierce snake across its cowling making it look like this flawed aircraft was in an operational squadron. German trickery was not limited to aircraft. The German army's Neubaufahrzeug was a failed tank design by Rheinmetall. Only five of these tanks were produced. German propaganda though suggested the Neubaufahrzeug was not only in production, but with massive armor and armament it did not possess.

German deception efforts were notable in the run up and during the war, but not exceptional. The US, for example, had early production B-29s tour the UK long after the decision was made to deploy them to the Pacific. Japanese air intelligence thought the Grumman Skyrocket was in operational service even though the plane never got beyond testing phases. So deception often operated on all sides.