Foreign Made Luftwaffe Overseas Cap

Product Description: This Foreign Made Luftwaffe Overseas Cap is a really interesting example, that has seen a lot of honest use. This field cap is made of a typical light blue-grey mid-war quality wool. On the exterior, the wool has very little nap remaining on the exposed areas. In the protected areas under the folds, the wool nap is mostly intact. The hard wear to the exterior has resulted in some missing threads to the stitching in a few areas, but the cap remains intact and sound. The Luftwaffe flying eagle and national colors cockade are both the embroidered type, and have been wartime hand sewn to the cap in typical fashion. A few of the attachhment threads on the eagle have become unstitched due to wear, but the eagle remains securely in place. There are three small, match head sized moth holes on one side, near the lower fold. This cap lacks the full liner that is usually seen on these enlisted style field caps. Instead of this, a 2 cm wide strip of twill reinforcement fabric was added around the inside edge, and to the peak of the cap. This Foreign Made Luftwaffe Overseas Cap has a great “field” look, and remains in a strong very good condition.

Historical Description: The “sidecap” was a part of the uniform worn by nearly all military, paramilitary, political and civil organizations in the Third Reich. It was a narrow hat that could be folded flat and tucked into a belt or haversack. This was, at the time, a very stylish type of uniform cap; in the German Army, it replaced the round “pork pie” style of field cap used in the Great War. The German name for this cap, in most organizations, was “Feldmütze”- field cap. Despite the name, it was often worn as a daily service cap by postal workers and other personnel who would never be deployed to the field.  The men and women who wore the sidecap gave it the nickname “Schiffchen,” meaning little boat, due to its shape. The sidecaps were made in the same type of fabric as the uniforms, in the uniform color particular to each organization. The sidecaps were adorned with branch-specific insignia, usually bearing some form of the German eagle and swastika national emblem. Many sidecaps also bore red, white and black national cockades. The insignia were usually embroidered or woven, but metal devices were used on some caps as well. Officer caps generally were distinguished by silver braid along the top edge and/or on the upper part of the flap at the front of the cap, and were often custom tailored from fine fabrics. The German military, and many other organizations, had broadly replaced the sidecap with a new, more practical cap featuring a brim, by 1943. But the sidecap continued to be worn by some troops until the end of the war.

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