Unknown belt buckle in Angolia's book

[Erno]

Here is a bit of information that might be useful to anyone with Angolia's 'Belt Buckles and Brocades of the Third Reich':

On page 587, an unknown buckle is presented as having a potential connection to Fliegerkorps or some other early Third Reich flying organization. Here is the buckle in question:



In fact, the symbol is not German, but Finnish. It is an arm-of-service badge for the Finnish air force, and is still in use today in Finland, where the swastika is culturally and historically significant.

[Walkwolf]

Mystery solved.........!

[Gunny Hartmann]

Great research!......

[Ben Evans]

Nice bit of research, in the book a rear picture would have been nice

[Erno]

Nice bit of research, in the book a rear picture would have been nice

Agreed! There are several in there that I wish were shown from the rear.

The Finnish badge was produced as a small metal emblem which was affixed to shoulder boards with folding pins (the same as German cap badges), so it's possible that someone just soldered it onto the box to make it look like a German buckle. I don't know whether or not the Finnish air force or flying schools ever used a box buckle. The photo is credited to WAF member Marc Verstraete, so maybe he will post a reverse photo when he arrives back from wherever he is.