Very nice. I wish the 8th crewmember tunic could talk! Dave

There is a separate thread  by the poor soul, who bought this jacket. According to vintageproductions and kammoman, it is fake (done by an apparently well-known faker). Nothing new obviously, but I am always sad to see, that people get ripped off like that...

Mr RKurz, Have you received the report yet?   

I thought there was a regulation on this. Thanks for refreshing my memory.

I think "The Honker" received the Bronze Star Medal at some point in WWII, After 1944.

Ok, these photos look "better" in that they appear die-struck and not cast.   As for assigning a particular manufacturing date range, that is going to be more difficult.  What we believe is the original "male" or reverse die for these pins had the "Gemsco" and "Sterling" as features of the die.  From comparing many photographed examples, the male die appears to have suffered damage rather early in its use, leading to common damage in the "Sterling" area of the die.    I'm not surprised by this damage...these GEMSCO deepwave dolphins have exceptionally high detail/relief, and the amount of force on the male die needed to achieve that relief must have been quite substantial.  To make up for the loss of the "Sterling" mark on the male die, the sterling badges were then individually counterstruck with a smaller "STERLING +1/20 10K GF" mark for metal content.   Against that background,  I believe your pin is not from the earliest runs of the insignia.  The pin does not appear to be sterling, and the male die used is either a completely different one from that used to make the sterling examples, or the "Sterling" mark had completely degraded from the stamping surface by the time it was used here.  I point out that the Gemsco mark itself is fairly weak, but the telltale stress lines in the metal left by the male die, and are found on sterling examples too, are in your pin.  Your pin-hinge hardware is also different from what I usually see on the sterling badges too.  So from what I can see, your pin likely isn't a reproduction per se, but I personally wouldn't place it alongside the standard Sterling examples (which I attribute to late WWII to Korean War era) in terms of timeline.  As I wrote above, the back-die details and hardware appear "later" to me.     Footnote: I've seen very few, if any, clear images of GEMSCO Deepwave dolphins in wartime uniform photos.  To a trained eye, they are easy to pick out compared to the similar-but-distinct H-H deepwave dolphins: the latter being quite commonly worn during the period.  But GEMSCO submarine patrol pins also show up in wartime groupings far less than H-H, AMICO, and Blackinton too.  So this may be a reflection of GEMSCO having much smaller submarine insignia market share during the period. Or alternatively, perhaps GEMSCO diluted their own market for their heavy sterling deepwave pins to some degree, by virtue of the company also producing other distinctly-designed (and perhaps cheaper) officer's dolphins during the war.  That said, the expensive construction and finish of the sterling GEMSCO deepwave pins places them in the WWII-Korean era; by the late 50 to early 60's, submarine dolphins became much less detailed across manufacturers and look "cheap" compared to 40's and earlier examples that have a more jewelry-like quality.

I met up with Ron Fitzpatrick from G503 at Grandcamp on Sunday. Ron is the creator of the G503 forum, G503 Jeep Parts and the G503 Facebook page and has thus created a worldwide community of Jeep owners... G503 was the US Government's vehicle model number attributed to the Jeep    

Joe's Motor Pool, a British based manufacturer and dealer of Jeep parts, brought several rarities to its Normandy HQ at Hiesville. There was a line-up of different Jeep prototypes, including a Willys MA ( I spotted a second Luxemburg owned one on the road ), a Bantam BRC40 and two 4-wheel steer Ford GPs..., along with a GPA amphibian.... Also they brought a very early production Ford GPW in unrestored condition.... All of these were driven to France from England...    

Two recent good ones from the 8th AF. Ike at right is unnamed with a great Brit made patch and all those pretty ribbons. But last week, eBay really blessed me with the left 4-pocket uniform of S/Sgt. Vernon E. Becker.   Thanks to having a full ASN to go off, it was easy to track Becker down to the 77th Fighter Squadron, 20th Fighter Group. After reaching out to the 20th Fighter Group webpage, I was surprised to find a photo of S/Sgt. Becker with his fellow ground crew in front of a P-51. Thanks Mike.

I just noticed you posted this in army dress uniforms. Are you wondering about the evolution and changes of the army dress uniforms?