US Camouflage: 1942 to 2018 | Collector's & History Corner

alright go ahead okay this is a selection of camouflage uniforms worn by the US military from 1942 to 2018 the first camouflage uniform the United States adopted was in 1942 what they did is they hired a bunch of civilian professors into college to design a camouflage uniform and they came out with this design sometimes called the Frog suit and you can see it's reversible it was a tan side for the beaches or for desert and it needs to say the green side now when his uniform first came out it was issued not as general issue but to special Troops for example marine radar battalions were given this marine paratroopers were given this alright at first they thought it was a good idea but after a while they started to realize that this uniform was good as long as you were stationary if you started moving and actually attracted the eye so the idea was maybe this is not a good thing but they kept the design the Marine Corps kept the design they use it for their helmet covers and that became the iconic marine helmet for World War 2 in Korea is the reversible frog pattern the Marines also made their poncho sorry their Poncho's out of a similar design they made their shelter halves with a similar design and the uniform itself was not manufactured after World War two the biggest use became actually civilians because well that's good enough in a military must be good for civilians so this started eventually get the reputation of duck hunter camouflage and the biggest use of duck hunter camouflage outside of the military was the Central Intelligence Agency which supplied Brigade 2506 the Cubans that landed at the Bay of Pigs and there are many pictures of them wearing this uniform so the Marines eventually kept this uniform more for support troops now the army they also went for this they originally made a jumpsuit which I happen to have in my collection which is a pain to get in and even a bigger pain to get out of and that caused a lot of problems in the Pacific campaign because guys got dysentery and when you had to take a dump you had to struggle with your long suit the army also used this design for their jungle pack which I also have in my collection basically it's a back pack with this design now in the army used this in Europe they had a stop why friendly-fire fratricide blue on blue Americans were shooting Americans worldwide because if you wore this people confused you with an SS unit so that was another example of why this particular uniform wasn't this dropped all right now after the war the engineer research development lab or ER DL was assigned the mission of creating a camouflage uniform and what they did is they created what we call the leaf pattern now they created a pattern that was green with like leaves and could be reversed this happens to be a shelter head okay now you're gonna find people are going to show you they got hats they got pants they got jackets that's because anybody that is aware of it in Southeast Asia or Asia you can go there's lots of sewing machines lots of scissors and if you go to papasan and go make this into a hat make this into a uniform he goes to mamasan heard the kids going back and they will produce anything for you if you give them the cloth now why the ER DL cloth design the only ones are really adopted were the Marines the Murray this is a marine shelter hip okay the Marines adapted it as a shelter half to replace the early pattern shelter halves that are seen in all the movies because that's what they used in world or two in Korea so the Marines went to this they also decided they wanted a helmet cover in this design so they had a helmet cover that was also reversible and that's the one that's most identified with Vietnam now in the late 1950s the defense supply agency decided this is too expensive and they sort of told the Marines your shelter hats gonna be playing green and the army which I developed a plain green helmet cover was told no you're gonna get a helmet cover and the ER DL patent after all the army created it right so the Vietnam War helmets are this the tents are hard to find the shelter halves but it's called er DL all right I am leaf pattern going now going back like this I gotta say that I did earlier videos with Joe that had he had this he had the disc EMA flutter in this collection so got to refer back to those yeah well we've got to refer back to any Marine Corps World War two this is a very again was very popular many examples now again and then Brigade 2506 also in Vietnam a lot of the advisors wanted camouflages I'm going to get into and they this was no longer in the supply system but you could go to your Sears catalog and get duck hunter which is of course what Brigade 2506 had many of the guys Brigade 2506 actually had this with happy hunting and middled things and great embroidered into the pockets because it was commercial now early American advisors you will see pictures of them wearing this some of them with Stetsons in this design again these were not issue uniforms these were commercial hunting suits that advisors bought on their own to wear the next camouflage of course is a very common snow suit this goes over the parka now is this one US government issue I don't know I have never been able to find any particular markings on this and it fits over my parka and I see soldiers with something like this is a Canadian is it Norwegian is it something in the United States buys off-the-shelf I have never been able to find out but you can see even it's got white on the zippers and things like that so I have never been able to find one with US government shall we say marking next uniform is not a u.s. uniform this is something in Southeast Asia the tiger stripe now one of the members of this club was alert in Cambodia sorry he couldn't be in Cambodia as we were not in Cambodia he was west of the border in Vietnam and he told me this is what he wore this was very popular with the South Vietnamese these are uniforms called tiger stripe they are made in Asia some elite units of the group of the Republic of South Vietnam were these and many American advisers and special operators would wear this over the plain green that was the standard US Army issue we're going to see the tiger stripes gonna come back but this one here is very small he's probably an original dye putted arvin size army of the Republic of Vietnam and it said they were made in Southeast Asia some people tell me they were made in Okinawa some people tell me Thailand others tell me they were made right in Vietnam but it's called tiger stripes and the owner was alert I mean and long-range reconnaissance but a long-range reconnaissance patrol okay okay American army did because if they were in Cambodia they sometimes want to wear anything that would trace him to America they would even carry foreign weapons and a non-us uniform and they wouldn't have their dog tags right well as Vietnam progressed we're going to go on there was a demand for camouflage uniforms well the ERDF design was already there so finally they started issuing uniform starting about 1967 but only two special sir Special Forces herbs Rangers the average American soldier never saw one of these okay these were given really basically to specialist troops and you can see by the tags all right gives you the information now sometimes there's also a washing or information tag on the inside let's see this one doesn't have it now some of these are 100% cotton and the one next to it I think is poplin okay and this one here is Marine Corps marked okay the Marines just took the regular uniform and did their patch on it but let me see if I can find anything here yeah there's a label here okay now the leaf pattern is gonna keep popping up the you know engineer research development lab but they keep playing with the colors light green a darker green the light brown darker brown maybe add some black so you start getting these modification that's why I had these two uniforms next to each other now this one here might have been washed a few times this one here might be never issued so you can you can see that you know the contrast sometimes between the two even though they're marked the same as code camouflage all right near the end of the Vietnam War they started experimenting again with different a different leaf pattern and that's this one right here sometimes people call it early wood woodland I got this at Fort Bragg at a thrift store for some reason these never got out to too many troops some of the airborne got it again the Rangers got it Special Forces got it but the helmet covers for some reason we're really mass-produced and as I mentioned in a previous video there was a time in the supply room where you could get the Vietnam leaf pattern right you could get the Vietnam leaf pattern you could get this pattern and then later on the later woodland patterns were popping up so in the same unit you'd have three different helmet covers and let's see if there's anything you know and other information labels no okay all right now let's go back this one you this the the the whole idea behind the BTU uniform was you washed it you hung it up you put it on it had that wrinkled look it was a field uniform it was designed to be worn in the field all right you weren't allowed to starch it you weren't supposed to iron it well guess what soon as it went out to the troops the troops are happy but in every unit there are people who engage and thing we call and they decided that this field uniform should be the equivalent of a Class B uniform when you are in the office so my next one is the B is the woodland pattern that eventually became general issue you will notice it is starched and it is ironed and it is pressed and it looks really nice that's right exactly if you were in the office and if you were if you were supposed to be a role model for your troops you would break starch twice a day it means you wore this till noon then you took it off and you put another one on and this way it had that sharp look so you almost made it into a dress uniform in the army there were two guys but this this is your actual now what I want you to understand is is the pattern it's it's called woodland okay and the idea was that we would have a pattern for Europe or anywhere where you're gonna be in the forest its sister uniform is right here the chocolate chip the chocolate chip was going to be the desert uniform okay so you all you needed was two uniforms you got a green uniform and you got a tan uniform [Music] but the tan did this uniform hey this was general issue everybody wore this and that was the beauty of it the Marines were the army ward the airport's were Navy Seabees wore the Coast Guard Ward later on the Czechoslovakian army the Serbian army two philippine army everybody liked the woodland pattern okay pickin on the firmament okay it worked the desert uniform did not work all right general Schwarzkopf was the only guy who looked cool in this okay needs to walk around with his chocolate chip now this was not an issue uniform this was work this was organizational in other words like your field jacket and your mess kit and your rifle your helmet you got issued this and when the guys went to Desert Storm there really wasn't enough of them so they had to crank him out in a hurry and most guys got issued two of them when the war was over a lot of guys wanted to keep it and what they did is they allowed each soldier to keep one of these so you could march in the parade back home this is what grandpa did during the war okay because they had decided this was a crappy uniform in the desert it's got too much Brown in it so what they did is will transition over here they went to what's called the three color okay this one here belonged to somebody who's served with the president neighborhood so it's got all its patches this is the way I got it but this is what we call the three color desert uniform and that's gonna replace the chocolate chip altogether the chocolate chip is obsolete it's gone that's it alright so you have this uniform again three color pattern flip it over you want to get a better view okay would its boonie hat [Music] yeah and now in between here I have a special one that most people don't see anymore this is the desert night uniform now you're looking all these crazy dots and things this thing was designed to fool Soviet infrared night-vision goggles okay there's pants with it all right there's a label here I hope you can get a good picture of it or not all right but this parka was designed to confuse Soviet night-vision goggles and it's known as the night desert uniform you throw it over your uniform it's a parka cheap you know cloth parka now you would think that now the taxpayers of America Congress everybody is happy they're on now I mean do this to uniforms you've got woodland and you got three colored desert everybody wears it Marines weird Airmen weird Navy wears it Coast Guard wears it nice and easy to camouflage uniforms okay so what happens I'll tell you what happens Marine Corps Marine Corps does not want to wear with the Serbian army wears wood Osama bin Laden wears the field jacket in woodland pattern the aren't and most of all the army wears it so what happens the Marines decide they will create a unique uniform that everybody knows is marine number two they're going to patent it so no one can copy it no one can make it it's for them in them only goodbye alright we're going to start there with the revolution where we went from about two unit nice article here we went from about two standard uniforms till about ten and we're going to see what happened yeah alright let's go see it let's go see you that day okay make sure you get the label up here okay we're gonna then start with what is known as MARPAT which means marine pattern the Marines wanted a unique uniform that they would control the copy of not they would not license it to be made by any civilian companies except for the Marine Corps and they have embedded inside the design every now and then gave and you see in the pocket here nice marine but they also have embedded in the cloth every now and then a little thing that says Eagle oh there it is USMC okay so now the Army's not gonna wear the Air Force is not gonna wear the Serbians aren't gonna wear the Philippine Army's not gonna wear it is unique to the Marine Corps and what's called MARPAT or marine pattern okay now they need a desert uniform so here we have the marine desert uniform okay here's the label who made it okay blouse desert MARPAT this is still the tags from the clothing sales store okay this is the real deal okay and it is marine embroidered on the pocket again and somewhere in the design that should have USMC sometimes I can't find that it's cleverly hidden in the design but this is the marine corps desert uniform imperatives okay you bound great alright now with the Marines going to this digital thing everybody else had to follow suit and that's what's creating the problem the next one I'm going to show you is what's called aqua flage or the blueberry which to me is one of the dumbest even though the army is also extremely dumb uniforms and that's right here this here look at this nice constitution right there the USS Constitution US Navy guys name it's got a nice hat and this is called the blueberry by most troops or aqua flies now why do you need camouflage aboard a ship first of all if you want to hide from the chief petty officer in the details I would recommend battleship gray the other problem is but if you fall overboard if you fall overboard and you're riding the waves we're talking about the ocean not the ones you got drunk at the NCO club you're gonna be in real trouble because this helps blend you into the waves if I fall into the water I would rather wear you know get you know Guantanamo Bay prison or orange or something where I can be spotted in the ocean I don't want to blend in to the ocean as a matter of fact this is 2017 this uniform is no longer being issued look at that they even have us and written into them just like sorry alright so this uniform is being phased out you won't be seeing any more although there was a question whether it had what they call CDI factor which means chicks dig it you know did you look cool in this when you were you know you're off pace you know what what it would it draw attention to a female you know how does anything elder any directions to okay now this is what's replacing it this is now the new marine work marine sorry Navy work uniform now this is bound to catch on because I'm just on TV yesterday I was watching on I think it's channel 2 seals and this is what they're wearing they're wearing a variation of this this is catching on this is for the Navy viewer a CBE or seal or any kind of ground mission this is what you can aware it's again it's similar to the marine camouflage but different enough because the Navy has to have its uniform the Marines have to have their in uniform alright alright the next uniform is the one that I'd most dislike and that is the universal camouflage pattern and this came out just as I was retiring so this you can see is you got this when you were still on I got just as I was leaving somebody got of me as a gift almost a going-away present this is the uniform that soldiers hate is referred to as the Paisley uniform it was supposed to be universal it was supposed to be good in snow urban combat desert or jungle and the belief by most soldiers is it is totally useless in all those environments that the only place where it would make sense is if you were defending a factory making Paisley cloth and you were hiding behind a sulphur or something like that it's just to me I always found it in ugly design but Nimmi that could be me anyway when this got issued the question always was it somebody make a lot of money on this was this choice of ëadd agents or Taliban sympathizers you know did Stevie Wonder approved this for the American army what the hell happened that this got even chosen and then of course once it was chosen as the uniform they had to make poncho liners they had to make combat packs they had to make body armor in this pattern so somebody made a lot of money and according to the stories when they first presented this to soldiers this was like their last choice and they were given you know what uniform did you think would be good this was like well maybe someday Congress will investigate why we even went through this all right now the Air Force since everybody else has got to have their unique uniform they're not gonna be the only ones wearing the old BDU so they went to what's called the Airman's uniform which is a form of tiger stripe that's a bu airman yep battle uniform okay and what happened is even in Afghanistan guys who are like pararescue and other ones they didn't want to wear this they did not like this uniform they felt it was not an effective camouflage uniform so next uniform going to show you is called multicam now the army there was demand by soldiers we need something better in Afghanistan than that okay the long purpose and the government had given a lot of money to the multicam corporation to develop a couple of uniforms which they decided they weren't gonna buy then all of a sudden they were buying them and the multicam became the uniform for Afghans and duty okay now what I have on this uniform just so you know for the fun of it all right first of all this here you can't find them anymore they are so they're rare though it's it was a nice patch and rumor has it the guy who designed it was walking by a church and hit by lightning so that's why they don't make it anymore it stands for who would Jesus shoot okay all right over here these are rare these are very hard to find this is the infra red flag detector that's so your helicopter can tell you're friendly okay it bounced of the Taliban needless to say will rip these off an American casualty and take it with them because it's it's the identifier is AFS there's two versions that is one says it stands for International Security Assistance Force and guys who were there goes I see Americans fighting okay but that's you know part of the camouflage multicam now next to it is what's called a combat shirt which I wanted to show people somebody questioned in the other video this replaces your t-shirt because when you're wearing body armor all these pockets are unaccessible anyway and they just trap heat so this one here it also has a little that's I can open it here it's gonna give me a hard time now there's a little doorway here this reveals also the infrared patch which is also found on helmets again this reflects back to that the infrared in the guy in the helicopter recently there's been an investigation there were some American special forces that were killed from a b-1 bomber strike and they were carrying strobes or something and they're saying they couldn't see it and they ended up dropping bombs on Americans so now I've also heard that some of these International Security Assistance Force they're written in other Afghan languages like posh tune or whatever so I don't know whether which one that one is and the patch here this is another favorite one WW jbd it's what would Jack Bauer do okay but again they're not issued they're just guys put on because he just got reinforced elbows okay so this is a possibility now next to it is the current army uniform now the question you're going to ask is how can a 70 year old retiree get these because if you go into clothing sales with your retired ID they're not supposed to sell you any field gear they're not supposed to sell you anything that would compete with the army surplus store in town there is one exception if you volunteer or are assigned to work with Junior ROTC you're authorized to continue to wear field gear even though you're retiree as long as you maintain weight standards and grooming standards now the grooming standards are easy to get a haircut and shape the beauty of this camouflage uniform is that it hides the fact that you no longer meet weight standards very nice but if anybody out there who's watching this video if you are retired military or former military in the United States check out the Junior ROTC high schools in your area find one maybe of your branch or any branch you can come in as a volunteer and assist in drilling ceremonies marksmanship be a chaperone when they go to drill competition or when they go to field trips to military museums or our military bases and you can you can help a younger generation out and the Junior ROTC it's not in every school and not every branch now branches are spread out just find out who the senior military instructor is give them your you know your background and tell them when you're available to help and maybe you can assist some young people and get back into uniform can you wear your yes you can you know if you're retired you can wear your rank everything service your former service whatever was your last rank you know as long as you're honorably discharged and you're helping them out and you know what if you got your old uniform fine I try to stay current that's the only reason I got the OCPs but I could have been wearing my BDUs which was really the uniform I wore during most of my career and as we could see we haven't quite an extensive collection here somebody asked me is is why do you keep the old uniforms because we're staying long enough it becomes the old uniform my new uniform I'm waiting for the old green fatigues to come back yes they probably will the LG 107's when I went in they were did we had to iron them they were horrible then they went to wash and wear of g1 us actually a mine was having a starch and then they went through the old westbury now we got you here in the background you said you wore tiger stripes yes did you were lerp right yes yeah I will the pants and something else something uh-huh but the past sometimes I've been you know tiger stripe and sometimes I wear just a Vietnam shirt uh-huh Oh a black doesn't it depend on which mm-hmm you have to remember one thing we weren't supposed to be there was did you carry when you were alert tommy-gun okay you know 38 mm-hmm I know when they started giving awards to people there they would never say they were in Cambodia or LA was they would say west of China tool village which if you looked on the map and realized was on the border you couldn't say that couldn't say that that's like I found letters from my uncle who died in World War two and they're always somewhere in France so we're in front all right Stan thanks appreciate it yeah nice quickie however a lot of guys didn't like the look of the dark the regular taller so they have a dark green collar in fact even though the second officer this is a molested uniform while holsters always had two colored glass here hold the collar listed only one

Channel: Chris Butler

Views: 431,678

Rating: 4.8537283 out of 5

Keywords: multicam, us army, us marines, us navy, us air force, UCP, OCP, digital camo, camouflage history, us camouflage, us camoflage, us camo, camo history, MARPAT, blueberry, tiger stripe, ACU, ABU, BDU, battle dress uniform, battle dress uniform camouflage, camouflage cover, camo cover, OD green, frog skin, duck hunter camo, camo effectiveness, camouflage effectiveness

Id: FrUtj98Ncuw

Length: 29min 2sec (1742 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 30 2017