Please show your Tropical caps

[Ralph Heinz]

LW tropical officer's cap

I should have added that the LW tropical field cap in my previous post without the false turn up sections on each side was also used by the SS and I have photos of one of these made by Paul Waggenmann. Many LW units in North Africa were only issued the tropical Fliegermütze and one FJ vet told me that only NCOs and officers in his unit in Tunisia had the billed field caps and that these were probably private purchase items. Still there are plenty of photos showing LW troops wearing tan billed field caps so some units got them and others didn't.

I've even seen two made in Naples Italy by an Italian maker and they were a direct copy of the Heer M40 tropical billed field cap but made in tan instead of olive green and with LW insignia. One was an officer's cap and the other was an EM cap.

Attached is a photo of one of the tropical LW officer's caps I have. It has a maker's ink stamped logo inside dated 1942 and the officer's embroidered initials on one inside edge. The lining is the rarely seen burgundy color. The LW aluminum Tropenhelm eagle is attached by a string knotted through a hole in each end of the wing and the fabric shows no signs of stitching. The material is slightly darker underneath the metal eagle. The cockade is also the metal type normally found on a continental visor cap. The grommets have a brown external finish and are made from an alloy containing steel as they attract a magnet.

Officer's caps like this were largely a private purchase item.

[Ralph Heinz]

Maker's stamp

We can learn a lesson from the maker's ink stamp in Alain's M40 tropical army cap -- not every maker switched to RB numbers in late 1942 when it is generally believed they started doing this. His cap is dated 1943 and still has the maker's name and location stamped into it and there are other caps with this same feature. I have one salty M40 cap made by Aurel Huber in Lindenburg (a suburb of Berlin) also dated 43 and have seen others. These smaller makers may not have been issued the new numbers as quickly as some of the larger manufacturers and it also meant they had to have new ink stamps made up to replace the old ones.

The zinc alloy grommets in Alain's cap also show the proper configuration that fakers haven't been getting right so far: convex washers (not flat). Some makers got these on upside down with the concave side out. Also the ends of the ventilation tubes split unevenly as seen in Alain's photo -- something you see in original caps all the time. They didn't all split into 6 neat prongs and some muchroomed neatly without any "prongs" at all -- it depended on how the grommets were made and what type of setter was used.

The attached photo shows grommets in three different maker's M40 army caps. The top pair in a cap made by Schlesische; middle with the concave side of the washers mistakely applied outwards in a 1942 cap made by Dressen; and the bottom pair in a 1942 cap made by Alfred Valet. All are made from different alloys containing zinc though some makers used grommets that had a lot less zinc and contained metals less likely to corrode. The grommets in caps made by Schlesische are often badly corroded, pitted and broken.

[Patrick Dempsey]

Hi Ralph,
superb post regarding the grommets. Very, very useful info and images.

Patrick.

[junior]

Very nice caps!

[Ralph Heinz]

More grommets

Patrick,

At the risk of boring others, I'll post some more photos illustrating original grommets and their washers and some of the variations (legitimate) that there are.

Top: zinc alloy in a Clemens Wagner 1940 officer's cap; Second: grommets in a Clemens Wagner 1942 EM cap -- a different alloy possibly containing some brass; Third: grommets in the private purchase Averbeck u. Broskamp (Berlin)made cap of Generalmajor Heinrich von Hülsen, last commander of the 21st Pz. Div. in Tunisia (note that these also appear to contain some brass); Bottom: grommets in a 1942 Kriegsmarine tropical cap made by Franz Ritter (unfortunately for collectors, the present day firm of Janke in Germany has copied the original ink stamp of this firm but with slanted letters). This one is an original cap - note that the grommet setter used here mushrommed the end of the tube perfectly without forming prongs.

Grommets weren't all made by one firm in Germany - cap makers got their fabrics, insignia, thread, and grommets from the nearest and cheapest sources and most cap makers were located in areas noted for textile manufacture so there are lots of differences from one maker to the next. However, when it comes to army tropical caps, the earliest ones (1940 - mid 1942) with a colored soutache had better have an ink stamped maker's name and the grommets are usually an alloy with a high percentage of zinc. Solid brass grommets would be a red flag -- but as shown above, some makers by 1942 were using alloys that probably contained a percentage of brass and it's also common to see rusty steel grommets in some private purchase LW officer caps. Zinc is "pot metal" and brittle. Stronger alloys would hold up better.

When the switch was being made from using maker's names and locations to RB numbers, there was a time in which (late 1942-early 1943) some caps were completely unmarked or which only have a size stamp but these caps don't have a soutache. When that order to cease stamping names and locations came down -- with a large number of firms to be contacted and a whole new complicated set of numbers assigned all over the map in Germany and occupied countries -- manufactures didn't just stop delivering finished goods till they got their new numbers issued and new ink stamps made and caps were delivered to fill orders without any markings. Still you want to look very closely at any tropical cap that doesn't have ink stamps and decide its originality by other criteria.

A few years ago, the fakers were making tropical caps with no ink stamps in them but with the desireable early feature of a Waffenfarbe soutache. Today, they are copying maker's ink stamps (in a previous thread I showed photos of the fake Clemens Wagner ink stamp that is being seen very, very frequently.)

The one thing that the fakers haven't gotten right so far is the grommets and washers as seen on the inside of the caps. Since fakes of these desireable tropical caps are so prevalent today, I hope these photos will prove of some interest. It's an ongoing learning process for all of us and to help avoid being taken for a lot of hard earned money.

[djpool]

Here are my only two production tropical caps.The first is an overseas cap I got from Bill Shea last year. I posted some pics of the grommets which I think are correct on both my hats. Regards Jim

[djpool]

inside

[djpool]

grommet

[djpool]

Heres my tropical billed cap and my personal favorite.it came out of a flea market in Germany about 15 years ago without insignia. I'm still looking for a good tropical cockade.This is a standard EM Model that was upgraded to a officer version by adding the 2mm twist cord. There are 7 pictures and since I can't remember which is which I'll skip any narrative.

[djpool]

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last picture