Airborne Equipment
With the 502nd PIR being an elite unit, and one that required specialist equipment, the 'extra' kit we can adorn ourselves with certainly has some interesting choices! As long as you can find them for sale of course...
T5 Parachute
The T5 has its own section, although I had to cut most of this out as the website owners who I 'borrowed' the information from had a shit-fit and threatened to take me to court should I not take it down. Typical American reaction to anything they don't like, so don't buy a chute from them. Moving on...
Update, I purchased a Chinese-made repro T5 for £200 all in: harness, reserve and main (no actual silk parachutes, of course). It took some figuring out to understand the harness, but I got there in the end. Of course it came with no instructions whatsoever. After assembling it and taking some photos, I posted it on Facebook with some text that I found online about the T5. Didn't think any more about it, then saw a comment on that thread complaining that I had taken it from a site... ffs - unreal, it was the same goddamn site as before. He had even put a link to his over-priced near-perfect replicas. Yes, they are near-perfect repros, but the prices - HA! You gotta be fucking kidding me right... sure it has "The harness features ultra heavy 7-class stitching" - who cares when the prices is $1,000.00 and that doesn't even include the reserve chute! But then again, your metal work does have "authentic paint shades" so maybe it is worth.... no, still no. Oh and the reserve is only another $300.00 on top of the $1000.00... all probably without shipping, of course. So... you can probably see why I went with the £200 option. Agreed, it's not as 'perfect' as his, but then again, for a saving of around £1000 it's just not even in the same competition. It's not like the choice when buying a weapon where it's between a £150 plastic Denix Garand or a £2000 original deactivated weapon. There you can see the value - literally feel the value - and an original deactivated rifle will only go up in value... the value of reproduction kit only ever goes one way... down!
Oh, if you didn't guess, I just deleted his comment and the link to his website and unfriended him, not that he'll care. I just can't be bothered with sulky "I'm going to take you to court types", block, ignore, you don't exist! Too bad he loses out on the free advertising...
LEG BAG TYPE X
Now, this is something that I don't plan on ever getting but thought that it should be included because of its randomness and impact on the Normandy invasion for the American troops. Having no training on how to properly use these resulted that almost all troopers who tried using this bag simply lost the bag and all of its contents!
I could hardly find anyone even making these; however I did come across two companies: first was the company that made all the leg bags for the filming of Band of Brothers. I looked on their website and, sadly, there is no mention of making these anymore. However, they may still make them if you ask. I did see mention of about a 2-month waiting time!!! No price listed, but I get the impression that it will be expensive as hell.
The only realistic choice seems to be a company called Jump Master 44. They have what look like a good copy to me, not being an expert in leg bags at all, of course. The two photos below are of their leg bag, costing 450 Euros, which seems like a lot for a bag, but it does look complicated and for such a specialist bit of kit that they will rarely sell, the price is probably justifiable.
Hawkins/gammon/smoke grenades
Although not specifically made or used exclusively by the airborne, they are always seen in period photos and drawings. The Hawkins was also referred to a mine, however whatever its correct name or terminology is (Grenade, Hand, Anti-Tank, No. 75), isn't really important. Soldier of Fortune makes one for about £38. I added one to my kit even though it's not amazing. However, it just about passes for a No.75 Hawkins mine.
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The Hawkins was made with two types of striker plates: one with a groove running vertically across the short axis of the can (correct for Normandy), and a second, later type with the groove running vertically along the long axis of the can.
The Gammon grenade was a lethal invention, both for the user and the target... possibly more dangerous for the person throwing it! I'm pretty sure from looking at the photo here that it uses the same fuse as the British plastic 69 grenade. However, the bag contained the explosive charge. A soft, flexible, non-protective cloth bag with an explosive charge inside... anyone else see any potential dangers with that!
From what I remember reading about these, they were very unpopular. I'm not sure I know if they were actually a good grenade or not; only that they were universally disliked and dangerous to use.
What Price Glory (WPG) make fair reproductions of these, priced at about £43.
I recently discovered that Relics also do a copy of the Gammon. In fact, I ordered one right away (along with a German Schu-mine). The neck on the Relics one looks a lot more 'yellow', I have no idea which is more correct or if they came in a variety of shades from yellow to beige! What I did know is that ordering from Relics would be a lot quicker and no issues with shipping, customs and import tax! Relics is the tiniest bit cheaper at £25. https://www.relics.org.uk/gammon-grenade-no-82
Now getting a couple of M15 or M18 smoke grenades was something I really wanted to add to my impression. However, it soon become clear that this wasn't going to be straight forward. Firstly, all I could find were the M18 in post-war colours. They were used all the way through Korea and Vietnam. These were green cans with a totally different style of text. Number 11 on the Osprey drawing above is of the type used during WW2. The only problem was where to find some. It would seem that all the big companies have omitted this item, which would have been fairly commonly carried compared to some of the odder items that seem really easy to purchase. Luckily, I have 4000+ 'friends' on Facebook and the bulk of those are either collectors of militaria or re-enactors. So, when I post something up like, "I need some WW2 M15 or M18 Smoke Grenades", it goes to a big audience, and I got a reply. I was offered two almost solid metal M15 Smoke Grenades. They were not cheap at just over a £100 with postage for 2, compared to U.S. WW2 fragmentation grenades (£20 each from Ian Malugani).
I think the only other real options are 1, to respray the post-war versions, or 2, to 3d-print them in hard plastic or resin. The files do exist already for these on 'thingyverse'. I would be really interested to see photos if any of you have printed these. Apparently, a company in the U.S. call ed Questmaster is selling pretty good-looking replica stencils for about $5.00 plus shipping, but they do ship worldwide.
M1 Carbine - Folding stock
Although the M1 Carbine gets a slating by almost everyone, for the biggest part this is really unfounded. Yes, it didn't have the stopping power of the M1 Garand (often seen as its bigger brother) but it was still a great and very capable weapon, hence why so many of these were made. The only thing that let this weapon down was the caliber, not that it didn't kill targets, but that it was the only weapon in the U.S. arsenal of this type. A box of .30-06 could be split between the M1 Garand, .30 Cal Browning machine gun, M1903 Springfield and the BAR. .45 'slugs' could be used in the M1911 pistol, Thompsons and Grease gun... yet this new M1 carbine had its own unique need to be supplied. I can imagine that everyone in the supply chain and quartermaster departments all having an instant dislike to the weapon for this reason alone.
The carbine did have some great features to it: it was compact, lightweight, a standard magazine system that held 20 rounds, which was unheard at that time. This is a semi-automatic rifle with a 20-round box mag! Something very overlooked now when you hear people saying, it was 'rubbish' and that you couldn't' kill a thing with it (pretty sure I don't want to test that theory!). If it was that bad, the army would have dropped it long before creating the M2 carbine or making the folding stock version to issue to its elite units!
Forget buying a deactivated folding stock carbine... they would be £1000s. You can of course, just buy a normal M1 carbine and buy a reproduction folding stock and swap them over. No damage would be done to the carbine in doing this.
You can buy Denix folding stock version, too. I haven't examined one, so I can't comment on the quality. I would suggest going to a fair to look at one before you order one online.
Number 4 on the Osprey drawing (scroll up a little now) shows the holster that these could be carried in on the side of the leg. This being ideal for those members of crew weapons, like machine gun or mortar teams, or someone carrying a M1A1 bazooka.
drop ropes
Another of those random items that you often see in photos of the Normandy invasion are bright white ropes which are all neatly rolled on themselves. They are usually seen attached under the bottoms of the musette bag, probably as its simple to put them there, and very easy to get at as your musette bag would be in front of (not behind) you when you jumped. See the photo below. It appears that this trooper with the bazooka has two... one on the bottom of his musette pack as normal and one across his front. It's not very clear how that one is attached though.
These ropes are really easy to find for sale. Soldier of Fortune sells them as well as every other re-enacting supply company. Of course, if you can be bothered to wind it up, you could just find a supplier of 1.59cm (5/8") thick white cotton rope and create your own... in fact they would probably sell rather well on eBay for those of us who are too lazy to do it ourselves...
griswold bag - for garand rifle
One of the more commonly seen items that would have littered the French drop zone sites would have been the Griswold Bag, designed to hold the M1 Garand Rifle broken down into its two main components. Basically, a sleeping bag for your rifle with a large clip-on hook so you won't lose it (sort of like the old 'idiot mittens').
Originals can be found if you look hard enough, but these will almost always be the later modified version, however you're really going to pay for them. Reproductions vary wildly, from thickness, colour and more importantly in size... some of these are too small to fit the parts! So, don't even bother picking one of these up at the moment.
There are examples all over eBay, just be wary that it could be either a weird colour, weird size or weird material... or all three! Just avoid them all for now.
