hand painted Vietnam 3rd Model jacket

Nice piece, though I have no idea if it is anything I should be interested in keeping. Can anybody give some thoughts about this?

Thanks,

Steve

IMHO-I would keep it if it was mine, look's to be a great example of hand camo clothing to me, there is a collecting specific genre for just this kind of thing.

On a personal note, I like it a lot.

Me, myself and I speaking, we agree with Gary and would keep it. That might depend on a couple of bits of info though. Did you get any history with the jacket? Is it camoed from period or post?

This looks like the sort of thing that would come up from LRRPs/Recon/SOG during the early years when camo wasn't prevelent yet. Doesn't look to be totally sneaky squirrel though as it still has the original tag and laundry tag in it.

Might want to see if there are any Vietnam association sites out there and see if anyone has any info on it.

No info came with this, unfortunately. Got it on Australian eBay. It was obviously painted using some sort of stencil arrangement for the green and brown, black being free handed. I like it, but if it's a post war doodle then I'm not interested in it at all. I also like the fact that the tags are in place.

Steve

Well, if it's opinions you're after ...

US jungle greens were sometimes worn on an individual basis by Australian Forces in Vietnam. This might have come from then. The camo job may be as a result of required specialist role i.e. recce (we're talking battalion recce assets here, not SASR - they had ample access to all sorts of camo).

The other possibility is that it was used after Vietnam. As a whole, the Australian Army did not introduce camouflage until the mid-1980s. Before that only 'Special Action Forces' i.e. SASR and 1 CDO Regt wore cams (from around the free world) on a regular basis. However, once again, amongst the regular forces, individuality could assert itself depending on the tactical situation and this might have been used by any infantryman, perhaps on recce task, or on OpFor.

As it stands it is certainly an interesting piece and it would be worth chasing up more details. Did it come from Western Australia by any chance?

If anybody has pictures of hand painted stuff in use, during or after the Vietnam War, I'd love to see them!

Filupe, it came from Victoria, not Western Australia.

Steve

That'll be hard for authentic pictures as most from the period were black and white. Let me do some digging and talking to some older gentlmen I know.

Thanks. What I'm looking for is what the patterns used looked like, not so much the colors. I doubt I'll find anything that used the same stencils as what I have, but something close to it would at least make me a bit more cautious about letting it go.

Steve