Hats question

[FedoraFan112390]

I know this is kinda hard since he's only holding it and not wearing it, but what kind of hat does my great grandpa have in this photo?:

Background: The photo was taken April 22nd 1945. He was an upper middle class former Immigrant from Italy (but had immigrated around the turn of the century and so was very much assimilated here by then)

Secondly, what about my other, Irish great grandfather? This is a still from a home movie shot in June 1963. I'm not sure if it's a homburg or a fedora:

 

[casechopper]

The first might be a Stetson Open Road or something similar. The second one looks like a fedora and not a homburg to me. The brim doesn't look curled the way a homburgs would be.

 

[Tango Yankee]

On the first one there's no telling what it is exactly, other than a wide-brimmed fedora.

On the second, it's a fedora with a center crease and a brim on the outer edges of stingy (looks to be about 2"), typical of the time it was taken.

Cheers,
Tom

 

[Rick Blaine]

On the first one there's no telling what it is exactly, other than a wide-brimmed fedora.

On the second, it's a fedora with a center crease and a brim on the outer edges of stingy (looks to be about 2"), typical of the time it was taken.

Cheers,
Tom

If the first one (May '44) was back east (Brooklyn) I would expect it may have a wide ribbon- just speculation as the thin ribbons were called "farmer's hats" in the trade, so geography may play a part.

As an aside, this had to be within six weeks of D-Day. How did that handsome Serviceman fare and where? (...not that it is any of MY biz)

As to the second I would only add to T.Y.'s description is that it has a fat ribbon & bow and appears to have no crown pinch/dents/creases other than the center dent and perhaps an over or underwelt brim edge.

 

[bowlerman]

looks to me like the first could have a pinched teardrop and flat, wide brim, and the second might possibly have a cav-type or overwelt edge?

 

[FedoraFan112390]

If the first one (May '44) was back east (Brooklyn) I would expect it may have a wide ribbon- just speculation as the thin ribbons were called "farmer's hats" in the trade, so geography may play a part.

As an aside, this had to be within six weeks of D-Day. How did that handsome Serviceman fare and where? (...not that it is any of MY biz)

As to the second I would only add to T.Y.'s description is that it has a fat ribbon & bow and appears to have no crown pinch/dents/creases other than the center dent and perhaps an over or underwelt brim edge.

The picture is April 22nd 1945, and the handsome servicemen you speak of is my maternal grandfather. He's standing next to his dad--the one with the hat.
It was his first Sunday home from the hospital. He had been in the hospital since January 1945, having gotten shot in the leg during the Battle of the Bulge by a sniper rifle after spending nearly a year in the European theatre. The leg had a whole piece taken out of it, and he spent the next 11 months in and out of the hospital for surgeries and treatment, finally being discharged from the hospital and army for good in March 1946.
His leg ended up killing him in the long run--sent a clot up and caused a fatal stroke in 1975.

You can see his leg wound here:

and him later in life, 1972: