Caterpillar?

[Noelle]

What are these? 

 

https://www.flyingtigerantiques.com/rare-wwii-usaaf-awarded-pioneer-parachute-co-14k-caterpillar-club-pin-named.html

[RWW]

Caterpillars make silk, silk made parachutes. When you bailed out and a piece of silk saved your life, you became a member of the Caterpillar Club. This person used a parachute made by Pioneer. The date they bailed out was 5/29/1944. The aircraft had to be "naturally disabled" for you to qualify. Skydiving and training jumps didn't count.

[Noelle]

40 minutes ago, RWW said:

Caterpillars make silk, silk made parachutes. When you bailed out and a piece of silk saved your life, you became a member of the Caterpillar Club. This person used a parachute made by Pioneer. The date they bailed out was 5/29/1944. The aircraft had to be "naturally disabled" for you to qualify. Skydiving and training jumps didn't count.

 

When I did a google search, it kept bringing up a different pin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpillar_Club  The one above seems like it must be fairly rare, then?  There are a lot of this other one.  

[KurtA]

Check out post 10 - parachute award pins 

[RWW]

There are two of the same pins in that grouping as the one shown in the original post. They are shown in the 3rd and 4th photos in post 2.

[Noelle]

Ah, I thought @rathbonemuseum.com was referring to these two parachute pins.

 

I still have a very strong feeling that that lot will eventually find its way to me.  Just biding my time.

 

But anyway, I thought that that reply was a couple other pins, and I forgot there were a couple of these little pins with that lot when I found it on Ron’s site.

 

Are those other two also pins for bailing out?

 

[Salvage Sailor]

Noelle,

 

This is our 'Caterpillar Club' topic showing different pins in our members collections.

 

Aloha

 

CATERPILLAR CLUB , GOLDFISH CLUB , SEA SQUATTERS CLUB

 

 

[Allan H.]

8 hours ago, Noelle said:

Ah, I thought @rathbonemuseum.com was referring to these two parachute pins.

 

I still have a very strong feeling that that lot will eventually find its way to me.  Just biding my time.

 

But anyway, I thought that that reply was a couple other pins, and I forgot there were a couple of these little pins with that lot when I found it on Ron’s site.

 

Are those other two also pins for bailing out?

 

I cannot say that I have ever seen the blue enameled parachute pin, so I am not exactly sure what it is. The silver parachute pin is a tie tack or other piece of jewelry. I've had a few of them over the years.

 

Allan

[Noelle]

2 hours ago, Salvage Sailor said:

Noelle,

 

This is our 'Caterpillar Club' topic showing different pins in our members collections.

 

Aloha

 

CATERPILLAR CLUB , GOLDFISH CLUB , SEA SQUATTERS CLUB

 

 

 

I found those after going through every page in that thread.  Looks like there are three different caterpillar pins?

 

I used to work for a company called Hyster that did stuff with a construction place called Caterpillar.  Considering Piper is a company that makes stuff and there's a Piper badge, when I first heard caterpillar here, I thought someone was referring to Caterpillar, and thought it was interesting that the company making construction stuff also makes plane stuff.  So that confuzzled me for a hot minute. :D

I think it's really cool that the names and dates are engraved like that.

[rathbonemuseum.com]

Caterpillar in this case has nothing to do with the heavy equipment co. It’s all about silk worm, or caterpillar. Companies like switlik, pioneer etc. Each company had its own pin. Refer to the thread Salvage posted. 

[Noelle]

2 hours ago, rathbonemuseum.com said:

Caterpillar in this case has nothing to do with the heavy equipment co. It’s all about silk worm, or caterpillar. Companies like switlik, pioneer etc. Each company had its own pin. Refer to the thread Salvage posted. 

 

I picked up that they are unrelated. Was just stating that when I first heard reference to caterpillar, I thought of the company I used to work for.

[dmar836]

Closed threads die hard!

I tend to think these were a civi version of the pin. You see that type of similar flag background on many "E" factory pins and the like for production excellence. Would make sense as she apparently received these r/t incidents while working for the Piper factory and not while a WASP. This was discussed in the original thread.

Dave