Army Tropical Shirt, unusual eagle

[grndevil44]

Hello

I picked up this shirt a few years ago and saw that it used to have a breast eagle, I managed to pick up a worn tropical eagle thinking it would fit the shadow left by the original

To my suprise, when I placed the standard eagle near the area of the removed original I noticed that it was bigger!

The wingspan on the Tropical breast eagle is 95mm, the shadow left on the shirt is only 80mm

my question is which eagle used to be on this shirt?? I added the black lines to show more clearly where the outline is

Any help would be appreciated,

Thanks

John

[grndevil44]

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi John, I just measured a tropical cap eagle and that comes out at 65mm. So not a lot of help there. I have no idea what eagle would measure at 80mm?

Cheers, Ade.

[grndevil44]

thanks Ade

I was thinking maybe a visor cap eagle? though Gelnn measured one off his crusher cap, not the same either,

have not got an officers visor to measure and not in front of any of my books :11doh

cheers

john:

as you can see this is a captured french shirt that has been re-issued, came from a huge pile of clothes found in a storage depot in the US

[Mark Gibson]

Definitely a very nice shirt and, although it may have had an eagle at some stage, you would do well not to worry about replacing it. There are very few photographs of soldiers in North Africa wearing eagles on their tropical shirts. It was much more common not to have one as the practice was quite rare. From what I've seen there were many more soldiers in areas such as Greece and Italy wearing eagles on shirts, so if you're after that North Africa look I wouldn't worry.

Take care

Mark

[grndevil44]

hello

sorry have just moved house and only just got back on the internet,

thanks for the response, I agree Mark, I am not going to put an eagle back on this shirt, I just wanted an example to go with it.

I was thinking that it might have been a continental eagle rather than tropical, I seem to remember in Brian Davis book on the German Uniform there is a guy in a shirt with an eagle on

I did think it might have been a hand embroided eagle

cheers

john

[NZMark]

Hi John,
Certainly happenned. This was taken on Crete.
I also think it wise to leave as is. Wonderful shirt!
Mark.

[grndevil44]

Nice photo Mark! thanks for showing

yeah I wouldn't ever attempt to add an eagle to this, I don't see the point, you can see where it was and it's part of the history, I don't want to sound big headed, I feel lucky to own such a nice shirt that has been clearly worn and added to,

I just am on a quest now to find out what sort of eagle it was ! I hope I am not overlooking something obvious?!

Cheers

John