Question on Canadian Jump Wings

Which one of these wings would have been worn on the paratrooper smock in 1978

For parachute qualified would it have been white or red maple leaf?

Both types of wings are for parachute qualified personnel, but the white version would be worn by someone who is currently in a jump position.

Note, however, that the smocks were worn by more or less the entire Special Service Force, not all of who were parachutists, so some smocks would have no wings at all.

I am not certain, incidentally, that those two sets of wings are originals. Others would know better.

Thanks for your help

I'm interested to finally have someone explain to me how to tell real Canadian badging from fake. I've not been educated in this area. For sure you can get these badges very easily/cheaply at Canadian surplus shops, and I'm sure they aren't original.

Steve

Steve,

The vast majority of Canadian cloth badges that you see, dating from 1950-2000, will be original and inexpensive to buy. No one copies them because they are not widely collected and there would be little profit to make. Key exceptions to this rule are the cloth jump wings that were worn almost exclusively on the jump smocks of the Canadian Airborne Regiment and the SSF. I remember visiting the Canadian Airborne Regiment kit shop in the early 1990s, and they had original wings in stock for sale to members of the regiment, and copies for sale to anyone else. The copies were easy to tell apart, because they had rounded corners. There are originals to be found, but they are not common.

I am no jump wing collector, but what looks wrong to me with the ones posted in this thread is the rough/crooked merrowed edging (any originals in my collection have clean, straight merrowed edges) and the maple leaf is not quite right (actually, it is too perfect), although there may be variations even on original wings, I don't know. There is a new book from Service Publications that documents Canadian parachute wings, if anyone wants the definitive answers.

As an side, most original, as-worn jump smocks in my collection had very little badging to begin with - usually nothing more than an SSF brigade patch, a name tape, and a Canadian flag. Out of six or seven smocks I have owned, only a couple ever had wings sewn on. I will bet that lots of the unissued Ambridge Thompson smocks that have flooded the market are getting heavily badged for resale by collectors to other collectors.