The M1943 Field Jacket and Its Children.

The At The Front Blog, part of their on line store website, has a highly detailed article on the M1943 Field Jacket.

Soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division wearing the M1943 Paratroopers uniform which featured the M1943 field jacket and M1943 field pants worn over wool trousers and shirt.  This was the start of the Army's current uniform.  These same paratroopers are wearing M1943 Combat Boots which were not a paratrooper item.

I'm not going to go into great detail on it, and indeed I don't need to, but the post does a great job of detailing one of the really great items of modern military apparel, the field jacket.

The U.S. adopted the M1943 field jacket as part of a uniform for paratroopers and in order to replace an earlier uniform (that later inspired the Tropical Combat uniform, which inspired the Battle Dress Uniform).  Soon after doing that, however, it realized the field jacket was a lot better than the jackets and coats it was otherwise issuing for servicemen and it made the jacket a general issue item.

The M1943 Field Jacket

Worn with the liner, it was tolerably warm if not super warm, but you could also move in it.

Three types of winter gear in one Battle of the Bulge photograph.  Left to right, M1943 Field Jacket, Wool Great Coat, and winter mackinaw.  The two items on the right were prewar times still issued in the war.  The M1943 would replace them following the war when stocks of them were depleted or withdrawn.  Of these, the wool great coat is undoubtedly the warmest (I have one around here), but it was also extremely heavy,.

After the war it went on to be modified several times until it finally culminated in the M1965 Field Jacket (the M65) which was a really great item of outdoor gear.  It was a general issue item until 2009, but even now, if you buy one in the current camouflage pattern, you can still wear it as a serviceman.

Me wearing a Woodlands Pattern M65 field jacket in South Korea.

I used to have a bunch of M65s.  Several OD ones and a couple of Woodlands ones.  I don't know where the old OD ones all are, although I gave some away.  And the Woodlands ones I have no longer fit.  I have one that was given to me, a late desert pattern one, I wear hunting, but it's actually a little large.

They were a great field item.

And they remain, I'd note, so popular that they've become a bit of a fashion item.