"One more Fallschirmjager question" Topic

So, no epaulettes on the Camo smocks, and collar tabs shouldn't be visible, either.

What color should the smock sleeve ranks be, and what color should the backing be?

If it's like the collar tabs, the backing material would be a brick red (based on Art of War volume 2), and the smock rank stripes should be a sliver-gray, but that would seem to defeat the purpose of camo.

The Art of War article says use the same color for the smock stripes as the Waffenfarbe, so FJ should have yellow rank stripes?

The backing cloth for the rank insignia as worn on the jumpsmocks is Luftwaffe bluegrey in colour. The actual insignia itself is white – see page 68/69 of AoW for colour plates – the very bottom row is the sleeve insignia.

Of course the only problem with that is it effectively puts "shooting ducks" (gulls) on your arms because there's such a strong contrast between the backing material and the smock, so you'd often see the FJ that wore the gulls at all (most of them didn't) back the gulls with a green color or a square of smock material itself to make the gulls less conspicuous.

yowza… someone higher up didn't grasp the idea of camouflage, evidently.

Are you sure about that? Heer used the waffenfarbe color for their camo sleeve ranks, so if that rule applied to the Luftwaffe or FJ in particular, they'd have yellow 'gulls'.

I'll have to experiment a bit, see how this looks. It may be a good thing for minis purposes, even if it'd be fatal in combat.

Pics later, when I can kidnap a camera.

Thanks!

Heer used the waffenfarbe color for their camo sleeve ranks

Where did you hear this?

"Where did you hear this?"

It wasn't in AoW II ….

That's what I get for posting without the book in front of me. I think I was getting confused with the line "Use the same color for the collar as in step 3 of the shoulder boards above," where it seems to be referring to the black/dark green/feldgrau choice for the 'background' color, not the piping color.