Stetson officer's visor

[nreed_94]

Not sure if this is entirely the right place to post this, but I wanted to get some opinions on an officer's visor made by Stetson that I picked up. It looks WWIIish enough to me, but I don't know enough about these visors to say for sure. What does everyone think?

[nreed_94]

stetson logo on the sweatband and inside the visor

[nreed_94]

back of the eagle stamped "acid test"

[KurtA]

Looks great. I've never seen that famous lid maker for a visor cap. Certainly "WW2-ish." With the Acid Test marked early style eagle, likely on the early end of WW2 or just before.

[doyler]

Nice visior

 

The rear strap was widely seen in WW2.Popular with Cav,Armor and Air Corps officers.

 

Not sure when they discontinued the use of it

[MattS]

Good looking visor! As it is made of fur felt and not gabardine wool it could date from about 1944 to 1955. It's very hard to differentiate WW2 officers caps from those worn during the Korean conflict.

[nreed_94]

Good looking visor! As it is made of fur felt and not gabardine wool it could date from about 1944 to 1955. It's very hard to differentiate WW2 officers caps from those worn during the Korean conflict.

 

Stetson has always used felt for their hats, so I'm not sure if they would have used wool like all other manufacturers

[MattS]

I believe you are correct. In the early part of WW2, regulations stated winter officers visors had to be made of olive drab elastique (not gabardine, my mistake) wool, fur felt came along later with the Ike jacket (M-1944 uniform). Here are a few early elastique wool visors:

[MattS]

For reference, the regulations in 1942:

[MattS]

Another thread on the subject:

http://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/index.php?/topic/233036-ww2-or-korea-era-produced-caps/

[SocietyBrandHatCo]

Stetson also produced a khaki fur felt service cap. That's right, khaki fur felt. It's probably one of the rarest service caps out there.

 

While fur felt was used to make service caps as early as WWI, the cap above has traits of a late war or post war cap. Most wartime fur felt caps have the visor stitched to the front of the frame, with the fur felt wrapping around the sides of the visor and being stitched to the inside of the frame. Late war and post war caps typically have the visor stitched to the inside of the frame of the cap. Most caps between WWI and WWII have a 1/2" chinstrap (the regulation width), which was widened to 3/4" around 1937. After WWII (I believe in 1951) the chinstrap was reduced to 5/8" although a number of cap makers made chinstraps 5/8" wide during WWII (notably on the Bancroft Flighter) to save leather (they could make 6 chinstraps with the same amount of leather it used to take to make 5 chinstraps; what penny pinchers!). Fur felt caps before WWII and early in WWII were mostly a very olive shade of olive drab. The color evolved to brown, with brown actually being the regulation color beginning in 1952. Wartime produced caps also usually don't have a cellophane or plastic sweatshield covering the entire inside of the cap (again, as a material saving measure), while postwar caps do. Also, real plastic sweatshields on wartime caps are rare, with cellophane being much more common. Remember, nylon was still relatively new during the war years and extremely expensive compared to cellophane. You can tell the difference between the two because cellophane usually melts to the inside of the cap, or it becomes sticky, or becomes very hard and brittle, depending on how the cap was stored.

 

Frames on postwar caps also tend to be plastic, as it was cheaper and stayed rigid. Wartime caps are usually wicker cane, cardboard, epoxy coated buckram, plain buckram, or cotton webbing.