Wwii army patch placement

Air Force photo. The patch was designed by Mr. James T. Rawls, an artist and a member of General Arnold's staff. He made many designs, most incorporating pilot wings, but Arnold rejected them all. Branch specific collar tabs were discontinued before the beginning of the war and not applied to tunics as a standard item by the factories during wartime.

The most common model found from - were the so-called "generic" Litzen with all 3 stripes in a matching dark green, and from - the "subdued" generic models with 3 matching drab gray stripes tended to predominate though the early generic green ones were still found through On rare occasion the earlier branch specific Litzen can be found on wartime manufactured tunics usually professionally applied to a bottle green wool backing using methods a or b above but this was definitely an exception.

In most cases the soldier likely purchased a pair of the branch specific insignia from one of the many private suppliers of uniform accessories and had a tailor either remove the original factory insignia or had the custom ones applied over top. This would not have been commonly seen in the field, especially among infantry and front line combat units.

The visual aid below is intended to help identify the "most correct" or "ideal" application of Litzen as compared to ones which are poorly executed. This is not to say every original pair was picture perfect - often times they are far from it - but this should be the look to strive for when applying Litzen. Note : the difference in size of these Litzen in the photos from front to back is an optical illusion caused be the camera.

Laid flat they would be perfectly even. Regarding the placement of Litzen on the collar itself, they are usually centered between the top edge of the collar where it folds over to the bottom line of top stitching. In other words, the gap between the top of the collar and the top corner of the Litzen is the same as from the bottom stitch line on the collar to the bottom corners of the Litzen. The front folded edge of the tab ideally lays parallel to both the vertical front topstitching on the collar and the collar edge itself.

In most cases the front edge of the Litzen is "cheated" one way or the other to remain parallel to the topstitching and collar edge, even at the sacrifice of being parallel to the angle of the outer bars. The bottom edge of the tab lays parallel to the horizontal top stitching on the collar and the bottom edge of the actual collar. The chart below should clarify these points as it is much easier to see than read:. Note: the collar shown above is from a tropical M40 tunic which has an "open collar" style.

The top folded edge of the collar on a wool tunic would be at the point where the vertical top stitching ends. Not all tropical tunics have the stitching end so conveniently at this point but in the bottom photo the top white arrow and red bar mark where the fold would normally be.

Like the Litzen, a bevo breast eagle can be tricky to get right. With the recent loss of the high quality jacquard loomed bevo eagles that have been available for decades, the ones commonly available at the time of this writing are considerably lacking in quality. One way to make up for the deficit in quality other than sourcing the "good" repros or using expensive tunic-removed originals is to apply them convincingly.

A lot of photos that I looked through as well seem to be highly inconsistent, some only having divisional patches, some only rank patches, and some had both. Similar variation can be seen on which arm the patches are on as well. Does anyone have some piece of the puzzle that I'm missing? After exhausting all my options, I sent an inquiry to the Dept. On a side note, you guys wouldn't happen to know of which stitches were used to attach patches.

You guys know were sewn fully to the inner liner of a coat See expertly drawn diagram , or if they were only attached to the shell and how they managed to avoid doing that? My sewing experience is limited to patching holes and general hand stitching. I've seen patches sewn through the whole sleeve, some just through the shell, some hand sewn, some machine sewn. Nobody paid attention to the stich count or style of the sewing.

The soldiers unit was on right sleeve, some soldiers had fancy stitching done by seamstress, or by his mom or sister. Or by himself. There is no definitive way it was done.

Sent from my moto g 7 play using Tapatalk. Thanks for the info! Was their rank also on their right sleeve? Also, you wouldn't happen to have a source for this?

I want to know that I'm doing this absolutely correctly. However I'm not sure if the same applies for combat uniforms. At the end of WWII and to this day, the soldier is entitled to wear the patch of the unit to which he was assigned while in a combat zone.