Quite an interesting 8 minute film clip showing American landing craft collecting New Zealand troops of the 3rd Division from Vella Lavella Island (Solomons) for transport for an attack on Japanese held Green Island, also called Nissan Island on 16 November 1943.
It shows the NZ camouflage uniform, various headwear from US P1941 combat utility caps, boonies, steel helmets with covers, pith helmets.
YouTube
Superb
first time I have seen this , just goes to show whats on You tube
Phill
A few full sets were shown in a facebook group recently by ted fernyhough, stellar stuff
Regards,
Jerry
Whatever its just an opinion.
items mentioned previously
Thanks for uploading these. They look authentic, the uniform's camo colours rather quickly faded and some were used by hunters for years post war. However I would say the boonie bush hat is not a type used in 1943/44, and more like what was issued in the 1960's. The boonies we see in the photos are either wide brim types or occasionally the US "Daisy Mae" type.
Here's a photo of a NZ made 1943 dated soft boonie which also had the spray paint camo applied. Very few of these survived.
The unpainted shirt tail in #27 (image 5), might suggest that the uniform was camouflaged ‘on the man’, so to speak (at least, this item); in much the same way that American airborne Pathfinders stood up in their jump suits (sometimes wearing their web equipment too), while a technician with a spray gun set about them.
The trousers appear to have been painted ‘off the man’, however, as evidenced by the camouflaged fly button area.
Of course, it may be that the painter simply didn’t bother to work below the waistline.
Fascinating thread. Many thanks, Anderson!
An interesting point. I've yet to discover any description of the process of camouflaging the khaki drill uniform. Certainly it would be a laborious task to lay out thousands of shirt and trousers to individually spray paint and it would speed the process to have a line of men in uniform passing by the "painters". And the P37 web kit was also painted. But it is commonly observed for the 3 button shirt tails to be not painted, presumably as they were "tucked in" but equally they could have been spray painted off a hanger and the tail part left unpainted.
Not only was the NZ made khaki battledress painted, but some USMC frog skin camouflage trousers were acquired and further darkened with a green paint overspray. Unknown how many were used but they can be seen in photos, such as post#24, the man on right wearing the bush hat is wearing USMC trousers that have been overpainted green.
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