Vietnam tiger stripe combat vests: three field-made examples

Key points: Vietnam tiger stripe combat

• There was no standard-issue camouflage combat vest in Vietnam — men went to tailor shops in Saigon, Japan and local villages and had ammunition-carrying vests made to their own specification, in every pattern from ERDL and leaf to tiger stripe.
• The custom vest sits at the end of a line that runs from German plate body armor in World War I through American grenade vests for trench assaults to the D-Day assault vest.
• The pockets on the first vest take either grenades or 20-round magazines; the 20-rounder was new at the time and is smaller than the 30-round magazine shooters picture today.
• That vest is lined with canvas cut from a US mail bag — the printing still reads through backwards, and the bag is dated 1968, which puts the vest at 1968 or later; American mail-bag canvas was better than what was available locally, so it was used for liners routinely.
• The lightweight tiger stripe vest mixes fabric between body and pockets, which was normal: to a working soldier all camouflage was camouflage, and mismatched trousers, shirt and boonie hat were ordinary.
• The third vest came from a US Air Force estate and was built for survival gear — pen flares, signal mirror, water sachets, rations — with back pockets cut from scratch rather than salvaged from trousers, proof the tailor had a bolt of tiger stripe cloth; it opens from the bottom, a personal preference of the man who ordered it.
• Standardized vests existed but not in camouflage: the 27P Air Force survival vest, and the heavy canvas SOG 1-0 vest, named for the team-leader designation and awarded by the team rather than bought.

About this Gun Review video

Vietnam tiger stripe combat vests, examined: Ian McCollum and tiger stripe author Owen Thornton go through three field-made ammunition-carrying vests that no quartermaster ever issued — a heavy tiger stripe rig lined with canvas cut from a 1968 US mail bag, a lightweight tiger stripe vest with 20-round magazine and zippered map pockets, and an earlier Air Force survival vest cut from a bolt of cloth and built to open from the bottom. Covers why GIs used tailor shops in Saigon and Japan, why mismatched camouflage was normal in the field, and where the SOG 1-0 vest fits.

Transcript: Vietnam tiger stripe