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Airborne A-2s
- Thread starter Robman
- Start date
Hamsterbear
Member
a2jacketpatches
Active Member
Here's one I had in my files, I'm not sure where I got it, but i'm in the process of making some multipiece leather versions. I know it's not historically accurate and all that, but they will look very cool.
airfrogusmc
Well-Known Member
Robman said:
Good to see ya posting again...
HackerF15E
Active Member
Marv said:
FWIW, he wasn't 'legendary' until a book and movie were made about the unit he was part of. No more and no less heroic than any number of thousands of other GIs who were involved in extraordinary times and circumstances.
Ian C
New Member
I've thought that for a long while. I've got every respect for those in Band of Brothers but they were just the focus point for what countless others were doing. They weren't even alone regarding elite units, US Rangers, Commandos, SAS, British Airborne, you can take your pick. I think the modesty of men like these says it all because usually to a man they will tell you they didn't do anything special and they were a few amongst many. I seem to remember Ambrose stating the attraction with Easy Cpy was the location amongst some of the key points during and after D-Day which made it a good story to put on paper.
I leave the crowing about who was best to the trollers on YouTube. One moron I witnessed recently was stating that 8th air force crews were braver than RAF crews because the 'cowardly English flyers bombed during the safety of night' if you can believe such cr*p. I don't think any bomber crews had it easy and anyone who played those odds certainly wasn't a coward.
Ian
I leave the crowing about who was best to the trollers on YouTube. One moron I witnessed recently was stating that 8th air force crews were braver than RAF crews because the 'cowardly English flyers bombed during the safety of night' if you can believe such cr*p. I don't think any bomber crews had it easy and anyone who played those odds certainly wasn't a coward.
Ian
EmergencyIan
Active Member
HackerF15E said:
All right.
- Ian
I recall there are details of an airborne A-2 in the 'Art of the flight jacket' book published by Schiffer.
Incidentally I saw an original recently which had an airborne patch stitch marks.
As for Band of Brothers, in my experience the real heroes are not the ones who go around shouting about it – quite the opposite, it takes some effort to find out what they really did. I love BoB but the trouble with Hanks and Spielberg is they do tend to give the impression that the US were the only Allied protagonists during the war. No offence to our friends across the pond but it does sometimes feel that the Brits are all portrayed as upper class twits on the edge of the fighting (the Arnhem/Holland episode being a case in point) – certainly we have a so-called government full of them at the moment :lol: but we were not all like that during the Forties.
Incidentally I saw an original recently which had an airborne patch stitch marks.
As for Band of Brothers, in my experience the real heroes are not the ones who go around shouting about it – quite the opposite, it takes some effort to find out what they really did. I love BoB but the trouble with Hanks and Spielberg is they do tend to give the impression that the US were the only Allied protagonists during the war. No offence to our friends across the pond but it does sometimes feel that the Brits are all portrayed as upper class twits on the edge of the fighting (the Arnhem/Holland episode being a case in point) – certainly we have a so-called government full of them at the moment :lol: but we were not all like that during the Forties.
Ian C
New Member
That's the difficulty in focusing on one particular unit. It's one thing to do that and another to deliberately dismiss Americas allies which I don't think Spielberg and Hanks do. The BoB book is dismissive in parts I seem to remember and probably the series reflects this. Nevertheless the contemporary opinion of Montgomery was quite disparaging in some areas amongst all levels of the US military and there is some justification in this but there are also reasons that would not have been apparent at the time, especially to the troops on the ground ie manpower and supply shortages when trying to take Caen and breakout from Normandy. Therefore when in SPR, Hanks says Mongomery was in his opinion over-rated it's an accurate portrayal of feelings at the time.
I've heard plenty of criticism of Patton and US forces etc from people this side of the pond but again they often aren't being completely objective. Patton was a different breed of commander but that doesn't mean one was better than the other. Both had their flaws as well as outstanding merits. The same goes for all combatants. How can anyone say one unit or individual was braver or better than another? What about the other side? Strip away the politicaL idealogy and it's hard to argue that these traits were non existent in the axis armies. It's all bar room arguments and never gets resolved.
The one thing that does seem to be agreed on is that the US forces had better kit and looked more stylish. Just look at the uniform of the US Airborne compared to what a British Commando wore and you can see why the re-enactors pick the 101st look. It's this rather than any theory that The US won the second world war single handedly that leads to US Airborne fanaticism.
Ian
I've heard plenty of criticism of Patton and US forces etc from people this side of the pond but again they often aren't being completely objective. Patton was a different breed of commander but that doesn't mean one was better than the other. Both had their flaws as well as outstanding merits. The same goes for all combatants. How can anyone say one unit or individual was braver or better than another? What about the other side? Strip away the politicaL idealogy and it's hard to argue that these traits were non existent in the axis armies. It's all bar room arguments and never gets resolved.
The one thing that does seem to be agreed on is that the US forces had better kit and looked more stylish. Just look at the uniform of the US Airborne compared to what a British Commando wore and you can see why the re-enactors pick the 101st look. It's this rather than any theory that The US won the second world war single handedly that leads to US Airborne fanaticism.
Ian
Peter Graham
Well-Known Member
Wey hey, I'm back online ! Personally, I think that the red beret and Dennison smock is way cooler than anything the yanks wore. I'm not even gonna get into any of the above discussions but what I will say is, and I hate to speak ill of the dead but Stephen Ambrose made caricatures of the British army, assuming them all to be toffs and fools. He may have helped popularise WW2 history but he makes a poor historian compared to the likes of Anthony Beevoir. Anyway back to the subject. I have a few great photos of members of the 82nd airborne wearing A-2's which I thought that I had saved on photobucket but it seems not so I'll dig them out, scan them and post here soon. Damm, it's nice to be back !Ian C said:
