Need help putting together Bundesluftwaffe uniform

[BowlofRice]

Hi all, if there's a West German uniform I actually like it would be the Luftwaffe uniform. It's resemblance to the WW2 Luftwaffe uniform is striking. The NVA air force uniform bears no resemblance to it save for the insignia.

Well, tommorow, I'm taking a trip to the surplus store to purchase a $25 Bundesluftwaffe jacket complete with shoulderboards, as well as a matching $6 overseas cap. So it's basically the hat and jacket in this picture:


I would've bought this stuff a while ago, but I only went to buy an East German social occasion tunic and I had no money for both of them combined.

But I need some help completing it. If I'm correct, the matching pants are these:
http://gowenmilitaria.com/Merchant2/...gory_Code=WTUT
And the matching visor cap (I love visor caps, but hate berets)
http://gowenmilitaria.com/Merchant2/...gory_Code=AFVH

I will order these items sometime in the future. But I don't know where to get the shirt and tie in the picture. Can someone tell me where? Also, is there a raincoat and/or overcoat that I can wear with the uniform? And is there a place where I can get it?

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

[Proud Kraut]

Trousers and visor cap seem to be the right choice, if you are going to put together a NCO uniform. If you are willing to pay the shipping, I can help you out with a shirt and a tie, no problem.

Lars

[usmedalman]

This site should help you out a lot. The link on the left side of the page "Weitere Informationen" contains a downloadable pdf documnet of the Bundeswehr uniform booklet with color pictures of all rank insignia, badges, uniform items, and even a diagram of where they belong on the jacket.

http://www.bundeswehr.de/portal/a/bw...E8NRt-QAtole8/

Good luck and have fun.

[BowlofRice]

Proud Kraut-Thanks for offering, I'll consider it. Maybe I'll PM you or something if I decide to get the shirt and tie; and yes, I will pay for the shipping in that case.

usmedalman-Thanks! The PDF document is pretty informative.

But I just remembered there's a difference between the jacket I'm buying and the jacket in the picture I posted. Firstly, it has Flieger shoulderboards. Secondly, it has a pair of embroidered wings above the breast pocket instead of the metal insignia in the picture. Also, I remember this old color portrait of a Bundesluftwaffe member, but he was wearing a visor cap. Did only NCO's and officers wear the visor cap, or did the EM's wear them too?

[Gordon Craig]

BowlofRice,

The jacket you described seems ok. When the Bundesluftwaffe discontinued wearing the cuffband with the sylized wings on the lower sleeve they adopted an embroidered sylized set of wings to wear on the right breast so your tunic dates from this period. The metal wings are Tactigabzeichen which indicates what the wearers trade is and does not necessarily have to be worn on the tunic.
The visor cap was worn by all ranks at one time. The schiffchen is more commonly worn now and would probably fit better with the tunic you have described above.
Shirts and ties are not common in North America and I have had to buy mine in Germany. With shipping, this is an expensive proposition but probably the only way you are going to be able to buy the real thing. Until you acquire authentic ones a pale blue shirt and black tie purchased locally would do for display purposes. I buy stuff like this from local second hand stores.

Regards,

Gordon

[BowlofRice]

Coincidentally, I own a pale blue dress shirt from the thrift store. I also own a black tie. I also just found a German site online selling the coat for around 10 Euro.

Well, I'm back from the surplus store, and the stuff I bought is a lot older than I thought. The cap is dated 1989 and the jacket dated 1974 (I used to describe it to my friends as a "modern-day German air force uniform" but now I can say "West German" because of the age! ). However, there are a few things I noticed about the jacket.

-I was only imagining the embroidered wings above the breast pocket. There are NONE.
-However, the jacket doesn't have the cuff bands either!

Since it's an older jacket, is it okay to wear a visor cap with it? Is this thing missing insignia or something? It doesn't even have the black letter "A" stamp denoting out of service BW uniforms that can be sold. However, the overseas cap does.

It's cool how it was the only LW jacket there and it fit me. There were a lot of overseas caps, too, fortunately there were some in size 60.

Bottom line, this jacket and hat are both extremely awesome.

[Gordon Craig]

BowlofRice,

The cuffband was worn from 1955 until 1973. From then on the embroidered wing was worn above the right breast pocket. Therefore, you need to get a wing to sew on your tunic. Could a visor cap be worn with this tunic? Possibly. There doesn't seem to be a hard and fast rule as to when they were no longer worn by enlisted men. You can not go wrong with a schiffchen though but your 74 tunic and your 89 schiffchen probably would not have been worn together but since you are more interested in a hat that fits you probably won't worry about that.

Regards,

Gordon

[BowlofRice]

You're absolutely right...I only buy military uniforms and hats that fit me, unless it was something that was worth a lot of money and/or looks good as a display item.

I found the wing thingy for sale on ebay.de, but I wonder if the shipping is worth paying for a tiny little piece of embroidered insignia. I also saw a jacket for sale identical to mine, having the same shoulderboards but no wing or cuff band.

Umm...I found a slip of paper with a number "3" printed on it inside the pocket of my jacket. there are two words I can't read written in pencil on the other side of the paper. What's it for? I also found a safety pin inside the top of my Schiffchen, it seems to hold the top together...is it okay if I removed this?

[Gordon Craig]

BowlofRice,

I would leave the safety pin in place. It was probably put there but the original owner of the cap to hold the top closed while he was wearing it. The slit in the top of these caps has a tendancy to open up when worn and doesn't look good that way. I wore this style of cap in the Canadian Air Force for many years and many guys modified them to stop this happening. The opening was sewn together, stapled together and sometimes guys just cut out this section and sewed the cap top together.
As to the piece of paper, that is anyones guess.

Regards,

Gordon