I recently read a Japanese blogger explaining how the Army's felt version field cap was a prototype item, which you already know is nonsense.
To demonstrate that it was a Pre-WW2 (in no way a last ditch item) Ersatz item, I show you below the original ordinance 1389 of 1st May 1939, indicating it was only for issue to rear line troops in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. All other troops were to be issued the proper wool versions.
Neck Flaps for the Army Field Cap
There have recently been exchanges regarding the Army neck flaps, of which more than 90% on the market are generally regarded as fake. So it should be of interest to have the correct facts summarized here.
The item was called a Boh Tare Nuno (帽垂布）, meaning "cap hanging cloth".
Development History 1932-33
While the army developed the field cap, they already anticipated the need to shield the neck from the sun to prevent sun stroke.
For this purpose they had already shipped 1000 neck flap prototypes in August 1932 for field testing by the Kawantung Army in Manchuria with feedback due by end of October of that year. This was just after the field cap test results ended up favoring the visored version and not the overseas configuration.
The following year, in June of 1933, another batch of a 1000 flaps were sent for another round of tests between June and end of August in Manchuria.
Official launch in 1938 and hook improvement in 1941
The launch of the neck flaps came a day after the official launch of the field cap on 1st June 1938 (see the last photos in post 2 of this thread for the drawings from this launch).
At that time, the flaps were attached to the cap using wire hooks as used for closing the uniform collar, but this type of tiny hook only could have a shallow grip and flaps tended to come loose and get lost. (By the way, some collectors seem to think that the material used was identical to the tropical shirt fabric, but it was actually made of a much thinner material.)
Therefore a pressed metal tooth-style hook was newly introduced on 19th August 1941 as improvement, which prevented the flap from falling off easily. The hook was made of pressed brass, steel or aluminum, but by 1941 steel or aluminum would have been more the norm. There are brass repros made of this hook, but they are all off in lacking a taper or having an incorrect center ridge shape.
In late 1941, when the the army issued a manual on tropical clothing and equipment, the old spec wire hook versions were still in circulation, so the manual page below says attachment to the cap was to be done by threading the cap's adjustment laces through the two holes and re-tying them. And use the 4 hooks (ホック) or Ko-Ha-Ze (コハゼ) to hang it from the cap. These tooth-shaped hooks also used on tabi closures are called Ko-Ha-Ze in Japanese. Item 3 of the section about the flaps warn that they are easy to lose; likely referring particularly to the wire hook type.
They also warn in an earlier part that helmet covers easily get lost when moving through dense growth unless the laces are properly tightened, so the situations for neck flap losses must have been similar.
WW2 neck flaps would generally all be the latter model, so wire hook models with post Showa 16 dates should be a red flag.
Last edited by Nick Komiya; 06-22-2017 at 08:14 PM.
Great info Nick. Regarding the material used, some period pics show items that appear to be made of thicker material as well. Would these likely be private purchase or 'home made' pieces? We're such items permitted if there was an 'official' item available?
Regards
Russ
Homemade or field made versions of issue items (collector term to justify poorly made fakes) generally did not exist in the IJA and every item was meticulously defined down to minute detail and controlled. So claims such as "anything went by the end" or "they used any hook they can get" are mostly excuses for fakers. Of course when the war ended and they were free to do what they wanted with their now "private property", they modified, field made or whatever, but so long as they were under military rule, all items were only on loan to them to be returned at the end of their service. Improvisations only invited punishment.
As readers of my articles should know by now, the IJA had a considerable lineup of officially defined Ersatz specs by 1940 which kept growing, so even such minor deviations from the norm were tightly controlled pretty much to the end. If you couldn't produce spec イ then they switched to ロ or ハ specs.
However, officer items are private purchase, so there were naturally variety in materials and style. The one below was used by an officer and has Kohaze borrowed from tabi. I also attach official Army tabi Kohaze specs. They are in brass, steel or resin, but black steel or resin would be usual. Remember, they would have minimised use of brass in uniforms from 1937 onwards.
All existing versions of army uniform spec books have the neck flaps shown in the index, but none of the copies have that particular page left in them. To me, this signifies they were discontinued at some time and thus had the pages removed. If such a page survived somewhere, it will tell you precisely which cloth and how many stitches they should have within every 3 cm of seam.
Last edited by Nick Komiya; 06-24-2017 at 02:04 PM.
I just realized that they had revised specs for the flap hooks on 11th May 1943, which is proof they were still issuing flaps till then.
Attention to detail! What did they revise?
Regards
Russ
Thinner gauge steel sheets (0.45mm now reduced to 0.30mm)by RussM
The attention the Japanese applied to these small details is quite fascinating, I guess all part of wartime economising or the continuing evolution of an item.
Regards
Russ
That is simply proper quality control in production, which is taken for granted by all Japanese manufacturers. Countries that did not do this lost their position to Japanese industry, explaining where things are now. But it is also surprising to me that they already had in place at that early stage all the production discipline that made postwar Japan excel in quality.
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