Description
Conversion of a post war m/36 Tanker’s Jacket to a wartime specification.
The wartime m/36 Tanker’s Jacket, officially called “m/36 Leather Jacket“, was a much sought after item among armoured troops and other men working with vehicles. The jacket was a pre-war jacket designed to replace the older m/22 Leather Jacket, which was a fancy looking jacket but much like the m/22 Tunic on general was not a very practicable uniform in actual field use. While the manufacture of the m/36 Leather Jacket was apparently stopped during the war due to leather shortage, it was again manufactured and issued for the armoured troops from the early 1950’s onwards. The new issue of the leather jacket has some differences to a wartime one that make it stand out. The most visible difference is that the buttons are hidden, instead of being visible. We’ve acquired a number of these fairly common post war leather jackets and do conversions on them to the wartime standard.
The post war jackets are all old issued stock, so their condition varies wildly – some are very worn, nearly brown yet some are nearly in mint condition. All of them have various depot repairs in them that are often quite crudely made. This means that each converted jacket is going to be slightly different from the photos shown here and may include a variety of old repairs in them. However the work we do with them makes them look like jackets that would have been issued during the war and we do repair the worst postwar quick fixes neatly according to the wartime repairing guidelines. This includes replacing parts of the destroyed leather parts and stitching. We have compared a number of original tunics in detail to find out the exact differences to make these effectively the same as wartime tunics.
What we do to make these fit a wartime standard:
- Post war epaulettes are replaced with a pre-war type
- Hidden snap-on buttons are changed to copper m/36 buttons
- Eyeholes made from leather for the buttons
- We re-dye the jackets to original black colour
- Collars are reconstructed
- Postwar repairs and fixes are replaced with correct depot style repairs.
These jackets are excellent replacement for a nearly non-existing originals as well as poorly made modern repros as – to be honest – these are pretty hard to tell apart from originals. The only quick way to tell the difference is a single easy to miss stitch line left on the chest next to the buttons.
Most come with a 1950’s well worn liner, which we also take through the same treatment as with the jackets themselves.
See photos for examples of un-converted and converted leather jacket.
