Fallschirmjager tropical trousers repro's?

[Frank Mills]

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[John Hodgin]

Hi Frank,

Have never seen these in Heer green. Have seen them in colors ranging from greenish tan, to the warm orangish tan, to a dark coffee bean brown. How thin are yours? The very thin ones are considered suspect by many, and downright bad by Willi. All the ones I've encountered with decent provenance have been of the heavy varity.

Regards,
John

[Frank Mills]

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[John Hodgin]

Hi again Frank,

Just for the record, the thin trousers have been around since the 70's.

Most often Luft tropcial clothing is found with the bakelite or tan glass buttons, but there are lots of tropical shirts, trousers, and shorts with metal dished buttons. Depends on what the maker had to use at a particular time. The metal dished buttons found on tropical uniforms are shallow, not deep, and painted tan. Deep dished, as found on Zeltbahns, is a "red flag" IMO.

These tropical Luft. 'hose' are technically just that, Luft. tropical trousers. All Luftwaffe troops wore them in Northa Africa and Italy. They are not jump pants, though Fj in the desert and Italy jumped in them. The only true jump pants are the wool ones.

Best,
John

[Frank Mills]

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[John Hodgin]

Hi Frank,

No apologies necessary, just wanted readers to understand about tropical trousers. Most call them Fj pants as you did. Hope you didn't think I was lecturing you, was not!

Best and respectfully,
John

[Willi Z.]

Hi Guys,

I agree with John's analysis. Those olive trousers sound very odd. Have also never seen the large metal deep dished buttons on Luft items. I do like some thinner late-war Luft trop trousers. Have had two mint pairs which were RBNred and had tan lining.along with tan painted small metal dish buttons on the fly and pockets, and tan glass buttons elsewhere.

The Luft trop trousers I don't like and most dealers have sold them as such...though, they usually sell them for less than the standard normally accepted Luft ones. These are the ones that are always short...have a brighter white lining, an odd mustard color, are sometimes mildew stained, have 5 sets of size markings stamped on one of the rear pocket linings, have very bright colored aluminum buckles and those very large and dark borwn buttons on the inside and legs.

The other's I don't like are those recent ones coming out of Europe......they are Czech repros and very nicely made with wear.

Maybe we should ppst some pictures.

Willi