LW trop. cap
Do we really think a huge company like Hoffmann (Berolina) had only one ink stamp to stamp literally thousands of different caps with? Clemens Wagner boasted in a 1938 trade ad that they could provide1000 caps daily so how many could Hoffmann produce and how many stamps would they have had in various parts of their plant to stamp caps with? Rubber ink stamps would have worn out and been replaced -- and some may have come from different sources or at different times. Hoffmann didn't use just one stamp as we know their firm also used a similar stamp with "G. A. Hoffmann" in place of the trade name "Berolina."
What confounds some is the eagle -- if it's like the one on my cap, it's longer than what we are used to seeing on sidecaps. Mine is72 mm from wing tip to wing tip. All the breast eagles I have are 82 to 85 mm from wing tip to wing tip. The eagle on a tropical sidecap is about 55 mm wing tip to wing tip but it was meant to go on a much narrower space than the wide front found on a billed field cap. WIth 44 licensed makers of insignia in Wuppertal alone -- do we really think there was only one maker of cap eagles and that every cap has to have an identical eagle or it's no good?
Awhile back, NZ Mark posted an army tropical cap made without side panels and it was condemned as no good by some -- but wartime photos prove these caps existed and there are several other originals out there in collections. It was a cost and time cutting measure to make them quicker and with less fabric.
Consider how many tropical caps were made during the period from 1940 to 1944. Several hundred thousand men served in N. Africa to begin with. Huge amounts of supplies (uniform items included) were sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean. Tropical caps were worn on Sicily, Southern Italy, Southern France, Greece, the Balkans and particularly in Southern Russia in large numbers. So --- how many tropical caps were produced? Given all the troops that wore them, it could easily exceed a million caps. If there's a collector among us who has closely examined 1,000 original caps, that incredibly lucky collector has seen 1/10 th of 1% of all the caps made. The point is that none of us has seen enough caps to decide that every cap has to be alike or it's no good. There are a lot of legitimate variations from maker to maker over a period of several years and as more war souvenirs come out of attics, we get to see things that add new knowledge to our hobby.
The cap I have so similar to Ben's came from an old collection and the previous owner got it from a veteran. It's a fact that very, vary few LW personnel were issued tropical billed field caps which makes them very, very rare indeed. Though dated 1941, they may never have been worn in N. Africa. They many have been issued in very limited numbers in Italy or Sicily or elsewhere. A FJ veteran who stayed with us 5 years ago told me some officers and NCOs in his unit in Tunisia were the only ones who wore billed field caps and he thought those were private purchase ones -- but this is just one man's experience and he was there at the end of the campaign, not the beginning. In his unit, like the vast majority of LW enlisted personnel, he was only issued a tropical Fliegermutze.
Do we really think a huge company like Hoffmann (Berolina) had only one ink stamp to stamp literally thousands of different caps with? Clemens Wagner boasted in a 1938 trade ad that they could provide1000 caps daily so how many could Hoffmann produce and how many stamps would they have had in various parts of their plant to stamp caps with? Rubber ink stamps would have worn out and been replaced -- and some may have come from different sources or at different times. Hoffmann didn't use just one stamp as we know their firm also used a similar stamp with "G. A. Hoffmann" in place of the trade name "Berolina."
What confounds some is the eagle -- if it's like the one on my cap, it's longer than what we are used to seeing on sidecaps. Mine is72 mm from wing tip to wing tip. All the breast eagles I have are 82 to 85 mm from wing tip to wing tip. The eagle on a tropical sidecap is about 55 mm wing tip to wing tip but it was meant to go on a much narrower space than the wide front found on a billed field cap. WIth 44 licensed makers of insignia in Wuppertal alone -- do we really think there was only one maker of cap eagles and that every cap has to have an identical eagle or it's no good?
Awhile back, NZ Mark posted an army tropical cap made without side panels and it was condemned as no good by some -- but wartime photos prove these caps existed and there are several other originals out there in collections. It was a cost and time cutting measure to make them quicker and with less fabric.
Consider how many tropical caps were made during the period from 1940 to 1944. Several hundred thousand men served in N. Africa to begin with. Huge amounts of supplies (uniform items included) were sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean. Tropical caps were worn on Sicily, Southern Italy, Southern France, Greece, the Balkans and particularly in Southern Russia in large numbers. So --- how many tropical caps were produced? Given all the troops that wore them, it could easily exceed a million caps. If there's a collector among us who has closely examined 1,000 original caps, that incredibly lucky collector has seen 1/10 th of 1% of all the caps made. The point is that none of us has seen enough caps to decide that every cap has to be alike or it's no good. There are a lot of legitimate variations from maker to maker over a period of several years and as more war souvenirs come out of attics, we get to see things that add new knowledge to our hobby.
The cap I have so similar to Ben's came from an old collection and the previous owner got it from a veteran. It's a fact that very, vary few LW personnel were issued tropical billed field caps which makes them very, very rare indeed. Though dated 1941, they may never have been worn in N. Africa. They many have been issued in very limited numbers in Italy or Sicily or elsewhere. A FJ veteran who stayed with us 5 years ago told me some officers and NCOs in his unit in Tunisia were the only ones who wore billed field caps and he thought those were private purchase ones -- but this is just one man's experience and he was there at the end of the campaign, not the beginning. In his unit, like the vast majority of LW enlisted personnel, he was only issued a tropical Fliegermutze.
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