I’m spanish - sorry for my english - interested in the history of World War II. I have a doubt and I’ll be very grateful if you can help me.
For long time I’ve been wondering about the reason for the color of the parachutes in those times, it seems to me very light and visible to the naked eye especially during the night flight.
Every time that me and my friends watch a documentary the question arises again, we made a lot of guess but actually we don’t know the reason. Is something related to the nylon technology?
Nylon was available during WWII, but I thought that parachutes in that era were still made of natural silk. In any event, both silk and nylon are white unless they’re dyed. I’d guess they didn’t want to add weight or thickness unnecessarily to the parachute.
Nylon was the primary material used in WWII by allied forces since silk is a product of the Orient and, well, imports weren’t exactly pouring in from that quarter. “Hitting the silk” was a phrase form the thirties and stuck. Nylon was introduced by duPont around 1938 or 1939 and was effectively used as a replacement for not only parachute materials but for, well, nylons as well.
I’m not sure about D-Day but know by the time of Market-Garden in September 1944 most canopies were a medium light OD green. White canopies were still used for supply canister drops for ease of location.
Like any other attempt at camouflage, you need to consider the surroundings. I’d expect a natural (off-white/light gray/light tan) parachute could disappear in a cloudy or overcast sky.
Beyond that, the goal was a functioning parachute, made quickly and cheaply. Dying the fabric would be not be quick or cheap. I’m assuming the ones that were green came later as someone figured out making green nylon fibers from the start, as opposed to dying it after it’s woven.
Parachutes used for night drops were colored, usually a dark red or blue. Daytime drops didn’t need any camo, because you were dropping 10,000 troopies at a time. The enemy is going to notice something like that.
Leaving out the Normandy landings, I think most parachute drops were in the daytime and visible to all so concealment wasn’t possible. The only protection was that the drops were a surprise, supposedly in lightly defended areas and from as low altitude as possible.
The Normandy parachute drops were successful despite the many mistakes resulting from their being at night. The parachute infantry succeded in its mission only with great difficulty and because of the individual initiative of some of the troopers. The drop pilots couldn’t find the correct drop zones, some troopers were dropped at sea and many were dropped in flooded regions around the Vive River. Units were scattered widely and they made up ad hoc units from whoever happened to be in the area. Most of the problems were in the area of the 101st Airborne Division. The drops of the 82nd Airborne Division went quite a bit better.
The OP says he is Spanish and says he has trouble with English and you drop an OD on him. It was about half way through basic training before I made the connection that OD = olive drab.
Mr Simmons, did they ever give you any training with the parachutes (like practice jumps) or did they just throw one at you and hope you didn’t have to use it?
Inks and dyes, along with just about everything else, were in short supply. With my second self-plug of the week, you can spot the wartime packaging here, because it’s the boxes which are mostly-white.
So unless there was a good reason for making parachutes dark (and as gotpasswords points out, the oppostie could be true), no reason to dye them at all.
