Mojave Jack
One Too Many
- Messages
- 1,785
- Location
- Yucca Valley, California
I've been developing a guided walking tour of the March Field Historic District for some time, and am planning to do it in a period uniform. I've been shooting for circa 1935, since that is the last year of the period of significance for the district, and have been using as my guide one of the best photos I have from that period:
Left to right are Carl Spaatz, Hap Arnold, and Benjamin Foulois (just before his retirement in 1935), and Foulois' enlisted driver, a PFC. (Note that Foulois is wearing plus fours for his flying uniform, a common practice at the time, and is still wearing his A-1 in preference to the A-2, which had been in service for almost four years at this point) The coat is nigh impossible to find, I've discovered, since the enlisted khaki cotton jacket was discontinued just before the war, and no one wants to reproduce anything pre-WWII. So I went with a slightly more working uniform:
Here's a close up of the hat, complete with regulation Air Corps hat cord, and 17th Pursuit Group DI:
And the GHQ AF patch, worn by all combat units after 1935, and my actual rank, Master Sergeant:
Here's another shot of the uniform, again with the coat, but until I can find a reasonable repro, I guess I'll have to do without:
The only question is, did the Air Corps troops roll their puttees from the top down, like the cavalry, or the bottom up, like the infantry? I tend to think it would have been top down, like the cavalry, simply because of the kinship between the two. It looks like the drive in the first photo has his wound from top to bottom, but it hard to tell. The troop in the last photo definately has his would from top to bottom, but I have no idea what unit he was with. The last photo, incidentally, comes from The Encyclopedia of US Army Insignia and Uniforms, p 511. The first photo is from our archives at March.
The breeches and shirt are both Jerry's. The breeches I like, but the shirt is pretty bad. There's no collar band, so it doesn't wear a tie very well, and the sleeves are made for, *ahem*, larger re-enactors than myself, and thus I have about two to three extra inches in the sleeve width. Gotta take it back to the tailor, and have the sleeves slimmed down a bit to a more fighting trim.
The shoes aren't quite right either, since I have the composite sole introduced in 1938, rather than the leather-soled service shoe introduced in 1928 (thanks for that info, bigshoe!), but they'll have to do. Hopefully no one on the tour will be a stitch-counter!
Left to right are Carl Spaatz, Hap Arnold, and Benjamin Foulois (just before his retirement in 1935), and Foulois' enlisted driver, a PFC. (Note that Foulois is wearing plus fours for his flying uniform, a common practice at the time, and is still wearing his A-1 in preference to the A-2, which had been in service for almost four years at this point) The coat is nigh impossible to find, I've discovered, since the enlisted khaki cotton jacket was discontinued just before the war, and no one wants to reproduce anything pre-WWII. So I went with a slightly more working uniform:
Here's a close up of the hat, complete with regulation Air Corps hat cord, and 17th Pursuit Group DI:
And the GHQ AF patch, worn by all combat units after 1935, and my actual rank, Master Sergeant:
Here's another shot of the uniform, again with the coat, but until I can find a reasonable repro, I guess I'll have to do without:
The only question is, did the Air Corps troops roll their puttees from the top down, like the cavalry, or the bottom up, like the infantry? I tend to think it would have been top down, like the cavalry, simply because of the kinship between the two. It looks like the drive in the first photo has his wound from top to bottom, but it hard to tell. The troop in the last photo definately has his would from top to bottom, but I have no idea what unit he was with. The last photo, incidentally, comes from The Encyclopedia of US Army Insignia and Uniforms, p 511. The first photo is from our archives at March.
The breeches and shirt are both Jerry's. The breeches I like, but the shirt is pretty bad. There's no collar band, so it doesn't wear a tie very well, and the sleeves are made for, *ahem*, larger re-enactors than myself, and thus I have about two to three extra inches in the sleeve width. Gotta take it back to the tailor, and have the sleeves slimmed down a bit to a more fighting trim.
The shoes aren't quite right either, since I have the composite sole introduced in 1938, rather than the leather-soled service shoe introduced in 1928 (thanks for that info, bigshoe!), but they'll have to do. Hopefully no one on the tour will be a stitch-counter!
Maybe quarterly or twice annually! The AF has to supply a bus and driver to bring the tour participants from the museum onto the active part of the base, so we have to do all the security stuff to get them aboard. My commander is very history oriented, and very supportive, but I don't think he'll want to support that every month. We'll see, though!
