Luftwaffe Officer Schirmmütze

[Artifact]

I picked up this visor from my local antique shop this past Saturday. I had been looking at it for a few months waiting till I had enough extra funds to actually bring it home. I've done what research I can on visor caps in general, but am no where near confident in determining with 100% certainty its authenticity. I tried taking the best pictures I could in my limited space so my apologies if they are not up to standard. The day I brought it home I spent quite a while looking it over, and I noticed the faint printing on the sweatband, eventually making it out as the Erel insignia. From that point I did my research on the lovely forum you guys have built here, checking out any other confirmed Erel made caps. From my limited knowledge, my visor seemed to hit those points, as the eagle and the interior stitching both look correct to me. I've tried taking photos of the critical points and in as decent of lighting as I could manage. Any opinions or advice from you guys would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[ErWeSa]

Hi Artifact,
seems to be an original LW officer's cap. What surprises me are two things:

- are these gold-coloured buttons for the chin-cord?

- secondly: the cap was either made by ErEl for Hierteis or the sweatband was changed at some time. Is there a ventilation hole to be seen under the insign (if you lift the sweatband at the front you should be able to see it from the inside of the cap) - this would be typical for ErEl (although there are also ErEl caps without the ventilation system). If there is not - are there any "unusual" stiches which fix the sweatband? The peak was machine-sewn to the body of the cap with quite narrow stiches (see at the arrow below), the sweatband should have exactly the same stiches, otherwise it was not sewn in at the same time.

Anyway an interesting piece.