US helicopter pants?

These pants have got a story of their own:
They were originally bought by a friend of mine while visiting family in Kosovo, he used them a while and then gave them to me. I didn't bother much about them, they have been in the back of my closet until now. Now after joining this great forum, I thought that if I would ever get any background info on these it's from here!

From what I can make out of the badly bleached tag this would be "Trousers Aircrew Combat 1 class". I'm really not at home with US camo, but after checking around at kamouflage.net I would say that this look like ERDL brown pattern, but I can't say for sure. All pockets except for the top two have velcro shutting them and there are strings at the ankle to make it tight against the leg.

So, does anyone here have some info on were these pants might have come from and some other info on them? Maybe info on how they could have ended up in an UCK village in Kosovo? But then again, that last one could be hard as all kinds of equipment were smuggled into the country.


Front and back:



Camo sample:



The label:



The size tag:



Thanks in advance!

These are flight pants as used for Apache crew etc.. Made from Nomex fireproof material. The colors are normal , it's just how they fade.

They are to replicate a BDU rather than a flight suit but somewhat meet in the middle.

Yes, that's an ABDU. First model.

Great, thanks for the info! Does anyone have any good site with information about this unifrom?

They are indded the ABDU, but i think that they are made for air crews in general, not for the Apache crews. I can tell for Greece, that the AH64 crew wear normal flight suits...

The oly ABDU reference i got is from Military Morons: http://www.militarymorons.com/gear/gear.2.html towards the bottom. Funny thing is that the design of the shirt is oldish (don't know exact date) but it sports features of much more newer shirts (collars, velcro, openings, pockets, etc).

I agree with Vaszi, i think they were issued to air crew in general, i have a few sets and also a very rare m-65 jacket made of nomex to...

Yes, this is for Army air crews and not just Apaches.

There have been specialized uniforms for US Army helicopter crew since at least the late 1960s. They were olive green for a while and then changed to Woodland. I presume there were still olive green versions alongside Woodland for a while since that was true for the combat uniforms as well. The design changed over the years. I'm aware of 2 Vietnam types and 2 Woodland types at least.

The uniform changed again in the mid 2000s, getting sand colored and then UCP versions. I think there have been two different UCP models, but I'm not 100% sure about that.

Steve