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WWII Boots - Service, Jump, etc.

MrBern

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No prob.
I do recall reading that some Rangers were issued Jumpboots.
Most soldiers hated those gaiters & tried to get better boots when possible.

The Doublebuckle boots look good, but didnt really impress the paratroops.
The jumpboots are very comfortable.

Oh, some soldiers were known to cut down their gaiters.
 

SamMarlowPI

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MrBern said:
No prob.
I do recall reading that some Rangers were issued Jumpboots.
Most soldiers hated those gaiters & tried to get better boots when possible.
I beleive
The Doublebuckle boots look good, but didnt really impress the paratroops.
The jumpboots are very comfortable.

Oh, some soldiers were known to cut down their gaiters.

i do like the jumpboots...my only problem would be looking like a punker wearing those boots on a daily basis, which i really wouldn't do anyway...from what it looks like, the paratroopers and reguar infantry tucked their pant legs into the boot...that right?
 

thunderw21

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SamMarlowPI said:
i do like the jumpboots...my only problem would be looking like a punker wearing those boots on a daily basis, which i really wouldn't do anyway...did the paratroopers and reguar infantry tuck their pant legs into the boot or was there some other way?

They were meant to be tucked into their boots or leggings but sometimes, especially in the Pacific, pant legs would be worn over leggings or even without leggings. Pant legs were always tucked into jump boots because they were seen as elite.

Here's a neat pre-U.S. involvement shot of paratroopers with early jumpboots.
earlyparatroopers-1.jpg


The way leggings were meant to be worn
NancyFrance-1.jpg


Pant leggs worn over leggings.
St-Mere-Eglise.jpg
 

SamMarlowPI

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Jovan said:
I was just messing around with you anyway. Didn't mean to come off as a stereotypical offended-by-everything-liberal.

in the future, strictly as a suggestion, your posts should resemble something similar to Cowboys so people won't misinterpret your message...as you can see from my response to his post i clearly understood his line of thinking and concern and therefore realized my faulty choice of words...cheers
 

thunderw21

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SamMarlowPI said:
http://www.backintime.com/moviereviews/savingryan/

another mentions the liklihood of P-47s being used for ground support rather than P-51s that late in the war...

Meh, I wouldn't trust that site. SPR did have many mistakes, but that site isn't a good one for explaining them.

As for the writer's problem with the chinstraps, yes, they really hooked them back around the helmet. Actually you rarely see chinstraps hooked under the chin in original photographs. If you look at the photos I posted earlier, none of the soldiers have their chinstraps hooked under the chin (except for the paratroopers before a jump), even in the third one that was taken from a combat zone. The author of that site doesn't really know what he's talking about.

As for the P-47s or P-51s argument, P-47s were more often used for strike missions but the possibility of P-51 being used for a strike is still there. P-51s were used in the strike role and right after D-Day you used whatever was at your disposal to get the job done. By this time in the war the Luftwaffe in northern France was sorely hurting and the need for a large number of fighters over Normandy was small.
 

SamMarlowPI

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thunderw21 said:
Meh, I wouldn't trust that site. SPR did have many mistakes, but that site isn't a good one for explaining them.

As for the writer's problem with the chinstraps, yes, they really hooked them back around the helmet. Actually you rarely see chinstraps hooked under the chin in original photographs. If you look at the photos I posted earlier, none of the soldiers have their chinstraps hooked under the chin (except for the paratroopers before a jump), even in the third one that was taken from a combat zone. The author of that site doesn't really know what he's talking about.

As for the P-47s or P-51s argument, P-47s were more often used for strike missions but the possibility of P-51 being used for a strike is still there. P-51s were used in the strike role and right after D-Day you used whatever was at your disposal to get the job done. By this time in the war the Luftwaffe in northern France was sorely hurting and the need for a large number of fighters over Normandy was small.

ok, bad example :eusa_doh:...but there are lots of sites that state the error in using a P-51...i wouldn't know, i wasn't there;)
 

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