"Artillery horse blankets. Any official color?" Topic

As the question asks…was there a particular color(s), that the artillery units(of either side) used for the horse blankets on the horses that pulled the limbers and caissons?

I suspect not, and could probably use just about any period color and be ok, but I'd like to be historically accurate if possible.

TIA for any input.

The standard cav blanket was blue with an orange strip down one side so…? Blue would be good choice.

Allons. Hamilton Dry Goods shows a red blanket with dark blue stripes. Hope you can find the "blankets" and pile on. HJ

Federal artillery saddle blankets were red with dark blue stripes across both ends and both sides. If I remember correctly the stripes were as far from the edges of the blanket as they were wide. I believe the width was 3".

I have the regulations, but unfortunately have no time to dig it out.

What I gave above was from an original I was permitted to examine at Gettysburg National Military Park.

How the stripes would appear on a figure would depend upon how it was folded. For the cavalry, the blanket was to be folded into six thicknesses. You could draw it on a piece of paper to see the variety that might result.

An order for the 7th U. S. Cavalry during Custer's time specified how it was to be folded. However, many believe that on campaign when resaddling the blanket would have been refolded each day to put a fresh part against the horse.

Incidentally, the cavalry saddle blankets in the ACW were dark blue with the same stripes as the artillery, but in orange.

Tom

Sounds like red with blue stripes it is. Thanks for the info guys.

Always nice to hear from the guys that actually know something. At least I got the cav blanket right. Now I've got to start repainting all those artillery blankets!

I thought the US Cavalry saddle blanket was blue with a yellow – not orange – stripe.

I believe that is how Troiani has them painted. But I admit to being color blind, so my eyes could be fooling me.

I would have guessed that like the accent color for various uniforms, the Infantry would have been light blue, the artillery red, and the cavalry yellow.

Now it's looking like the blanket itself for the artillery is red.

So what might be the color of the horse blanket for a mounted infantry officer? I am assembling a large cavalry force (only played with infantry up until now) so nothing has been painted yet. But I would like to get it right!