Camouflage uniforms of the Vietnam Wars Part 1: French Indochina.

[kammo man]

While all this was going on The British were also exploring different avenues .Sometime in 1942 a new system was introduced .
This became known as the Windproof uniforms .
The uniforms were issued in 2 piece sets .
A smock and trousers .

This system came in 3 different camouflage types .
European camouflage scheme .
Snow camouflage
Sand camouflage .

The European scheme became known as SAS pattern .
This is incorrect as the uniforms were intended as common issue .

The design of the smock closely follows a 1890s Eskmo hunting jacket made from seal skin .
I seen one first hand in the Ulster Museum in the 1980s and took a picture of it .
I will show it here for refence .

Here is a Windproof smock that has been modified with the additon of a zip .

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And the rear .
Note the shaping of the hood and mid jacket .
This is a very old and proven design .
At least 50 years old in 1942 !!!!

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more to follow

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Here is the jacket .
This was made from sealskin .
Some explorer must have remembered the style and copied it !!!

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and the other side .

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The trousers also have been modified with the addition of an extra leg pocket .
The Windproof pattern has a very large repeat length .
The scheme is first printed on way and then printed opposite this .
After the screenes have been mixed up ,the scheme becomes very random .
There is no piece of pattern that is a start point .
When this pattern was copied by the Viets in 1961 they changed this and had a start -stop added ,to ease production .

[kammo man]

The rear of the trousers .
I must also add these uniforms were designed to be worn as over garments .
This may be one reason why a lot of tailoring was done to ammend them .

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The French also added this cap to the uniform .
The cap is a basic copy of the Japanese tropical cap .

I will give a prize to the first one to name the General who made this cap famous .

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After WW2 both Britan and USA gave -sold France vast stocks of surplus camouflage clothing .

The windproof aquired the nickname Sausage skins .
No doubt in part to the smooth feel of the fabric , which was high quality poplin and to the hue of the printed fabric .
More nicknames also were given this pattern but I dont want to jump the gun yet .

I will show some cuts and patterns from USA next

[kammo man]

At the start of WW2 the US was as far behind as the rest of the world in camouflage development with the exception of Germany who were the leaders by about 50 light years ahead .
They dived head first into development and soon had a winner .
I could talk all day on the trails for the winning pattern but that would be a long and massive thread all on its own .

The pattern chosen got the nickname Frogskin , by the Marines who wore it .
I will use this name when talking about this WW2 pattern .

Many uniforms were made using the one and only pattern used by the US in WWWW2 .
I will try to cover the main ones .

After looking at numerous Indochina 1st war photographs several garments show up .
Here is a Matine 1st cut jacket as used byUS marines and French Paratroopers .
This has 3 pockets and is mint condition

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This came with a factory applyed EGA

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This was a set .
Matching trousers also were issued .
They had 1 pocket on each side .

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The hip pocket .
It is worth noteing these garments were fully reversable .
But this beach side of the pattern was seldom or never used in Vietnam .

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The US marines had there own short lived parachute batallion .
They recieved their own specialised combat clothing ,here is a 3rd pattern jump jacket .
These appeared in numbers and were worn by the French .

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And the pockets .