Airborne A-2s

[Peter Graham]

Why thank you David. Much appreciated. Here's a few pics I've dug out. Sorry for the poor quality. My scanner is not rigged up so I had to photograph them. The first shows Cpt Bob Piper of the 82nd Airborne with his wife to be in 1945. The second pic shows two officers of the 82nd wearing B-3's at camp Cromore in Northern Ireland.

 

[Ian C]

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

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 !

Plus how many airborne force have since took on the red (or maroon) beret? I agree with everything you say but I would say that overall the US kit was better looking than the stuff issued to UK forces. Add in a pair of nylons, a Hershey bar and a packet of Lucky Strike that turned the eye of many a girl over here and the results speak for themselves.

Ian

 

[Peter Graham]

I do agree with you on the US kit Ian, apart from the Dennison and the beret. One of my passions is collecting US web equipment and I'm currently putting together a set as used by an airborne officer circa 1944. I'm trying to source good, original kit, which is harder to track down than I first thought, but I'm getting there.

 

[dujardin]

one for sale this time on ebay France

http://cgi.befr.ebay.be/ws/eBayISAPI.dl ... ESINDXX:IT

 

[Anonymous]

Looks like an Aussie patch. Both sewn on after linner was removed, it gets a no vote.