Assault Vest - J A Shoe - 1944
The assault vest has become today one of the rarest items of US equipment with only about 12000 items ever been made.
The vests where only ever used on D-day by Rangers, 1st, 4th and 29th infantry divisions. There is evidence to suggest that war correspondence and engineer beach battalions also used the vest.
The vests were very cumbersome and very hot to wear which made them very unpopular with the troops.
A lot of troops either ditched them or shortened them so they could be used in combination with a normal web belt.
This particular jacket is OD-3 in colour and made by the J A Shoe Co. in 1944. It is commonly known that very few OD-3 examples ever made it to Normandy and the batch that did were made by J A Shoe. It is far more common to see Tweedie or Harrian assault vest in a darker shade of OD in all the Normandy pictures.