Panzermeyer's camo jacket - fieldgrey equivalent?

[Gran Sasso]

6

[Gran Sasso]

last

[Lloyd I.]

An oft overused term but in this case for once absolutely true, rare. To not buy it would be folly.

[Zauberflöte]

Very interesting indeed and excellent details. It has great appeal although being a ugly tunic. Very collectable out of rarity scope IMO.

[galizien41]

Any sign of it ever having an eagle?

[PeterM7]

It's a clever design to utilize short lengths of material, what might normally be called off cuts. By breaking down the tunic into sections, the leftover pieces normally discarded can be cut to a pattern and used to make a tunic, probably important when wartime shortages started effecting output.
It would be interesting to know if this innovation was widespread in factories, or limited to some as it is surprising not many examples have survived.

[anmarlodz]

A very interesting mix of italian cloth; italian wool and italian gabardine leftovers.

[Hptm. Fuhrmann]

Very interesting piece, didn't even know there was also a field grey variant of it, thanks for the detailed pictures!

It's a clever design to utilize short lengths of material, what might normally be called off cuts. By breaking down the tunic into sections, the leftover pieces normally discarded can be cut to a pattern and used to make a tunic, probably important when wartime shortages started effecting output.
It would be interesting to know if this innovation was widespread in factories, or limited to some as it is surprising not many examples have survived.

I don't think these tunic were designed to be patchwork-pieces to use leftover material scraps. The twill weave on the grey fabric (which I think is a wool blend instead of cotton as suggested) goes in the same direction all over the tunic, this couldn't have been achieved if you only got scraps to work with. Besides that, making a tunic from scraps is way more time consuming than making a bulk of regular tunics. For regular tunics you have a stack of several layers of cloth, you put the patterns on the top layer, placing them so that you get as little scraps as possible, trace the patterns and then cut the whole stack according to them. So with one cutting you get enough pieces for, let's say, 10 tunics. If you use scraps you first have to look for pieces that fit your patterns and then trace and cut every part individually. That's just not economical. Also, looking at the construction of the tunic, assembling all those individual parts looks to be way more time consuming than a regular tunic. The little scraps that were left from regular uniform making were either used to make insignia like shoulder straps or they were recycled and made into new cloth.

I think these were experimental, factory made tunics produced in a small number and sent out to units for field trial. All the parts on those tunics that are prone to heavy wear are made from field grey wool. The shoulders and upper back where your Y- or backpack-straps are placed and the weight of your equipment rested; the waist were your belt was placed; and your forearms up to the elbows where you prop yourself up while crawling on the ground.
Maybe those tunics were only intended for use by special units but the trials ended unsatisfactory or the cost-benefit-ratio didn't add up?

A very interesting mix of italian cloth; italian wool and italian gabardine leftovers.

Nothing on this tunic is made from italian fabrics, it's regular german field grey wool and a twill fabric that's kind of reminiscent of the fabric used for some early black panzer wraps.

[Michael N]

Very cool!

[Varsity]

Never seen before, very interesting thread!

[Graham G]

This is a fascinating thread- both the bluse itself and the photos of it in wear. I've been familiar with the blurred edge ones for a while, as they appear quite a bit in Nord (Rgt.11) photographs from 1943-44 (as well as the HJ officers, of course), but haven't ever seen these grey ones before. Great thread!

[djpool]

Wow! What a rare find and to have period photos just makes it that much better. Jim

[Sturmmann]

Few more observations about the tunic.
As Hptm. Fuhrmann stated it is not definitely made out of leftover material scraps. You can seen from the inside picture that the tunic is made of the twill fabric except the upper part of the torso. The grey wool parts on waist and on the sleeves were added on top of the twill fabric. I guess these were the areas which were most likely to worn out. Belt and Y straps would perhaps rub holes in twill fabric more quickly than it would on wool.

About the background of the tunic - someone here stated that strange things were manufactured in east. I doubt that it was manufactured in east. I have known the existence of this type of tunics for many years through period photos of 20. Estonian SS division. These tunics appear on the photos in autumn 1944 when the 20. ED was being reformed in Neuhammer training camp in Silesia. My assumption is that perhaps these tunics were issued to 20. ED for field testing.

[paintbrush]

I can't figure out how they thought this tunic could be mass-produced in 1944. They couldn't even get enough material to make the reg. tunics.

Amazing find & thanks for posting the photos.

[Sturmmann]

Here is one more photo of the same type of tunic worn by the NCO from 20th Estonian SS division.

Have to use an external link for the picture because after I updated my e-mail in user control panel I have lost my association member status and can't get any replies from WAF admins.