Ireland's Axis style uniforms

easyredrider wrote: »

Is there an explanation as to why Ireland wore axis style military uniforms in the 30s and 40s. British pathe has some videos on YouTube documenting the Irish army one on St Patrick's Day, with Italian style fascist uniforms and the other in 1940 , with infantry wearing German style helmets?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EpjD9mgeEfA

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7bdOQ938Lmg

Given most of the senior officers would have fought in the war of independence I suspect "not remotely British looking" was probably a big factor in the selection.

Regarding the German helmets; https://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/artefacts-vickers-helmet/

So the Irish Free State had to look elsewhere: an order for 5,000 helmets was placed with Vickers & Co. Ltd, London, and the design was to be based on the German pattern worn during the Great War. The German consulate in Dublin reported to the Foreign Office in Berlin on 16 August 1927 to the effect that Vickers & Co. had been asked to deliver the helmets ‘to be tested for their expediency during the autumn manoeuvres next year’.
The helmet produced was similar to the German one except that the sides were more gently sloped and it was painted a dark shade of green.

The thing is,the Army had long since decided that it would model itself on the British simply because it was our nearest source of arms and equipment, our officers and NCOs had combat experience using those weapons and more than a few had served in WW 1 and knew British tactics intimately and also knew that the kit was good. Our economy was effectively dependent on exports to the UK and our money tied to it's currency,so we were aligned to the British in so many ways. Our officers went there for training or were trained here by British instructors and that has continued to this day. The Army had looked at and tested many non-British weapons and equipment and toured the US and parts of Europe and attended exercises and visited factories and so on and in the end, bought British. It made no sense to introduce metric measurements for tools and hardware or use non-British ammunition. A lot of people disagreed with this policy and urged Dev and others to buy from other places but in the end, the nearness to Britain decided it. As for the Vickers helmet, it was regarded as junk by anyone who wore it, as, unless it was fitted properly to the wearer, it was a bad fit and would roll around the head and the soldier was required to remove his capbadge and clip it onto the mount at the front of the helmet, from where it was often lost or broken and soldiers had to pay for new ones. The tunic of that era was also hated as it made the wearer sweat too much and it was very difficult to keep clean. Battledress, when it came into service, was initially disliked but the soldiers preferred it to the more formal tunic. Ironically, the Germans copied the BD in WW 2 as it was easier to manufacture than the standard tunic and used less materials. There were attempts to buy American equipment but such kit invariably came with conditions that suited the Americans,such as a demand to give access to the Treaty ports for anti-submarine ships.
As a side note, after the Civil War was over and the Army had settled down and was finding it's feet, they rounded up as many of the types of small arms used in the wars and examined and tested them all. My late grandfather was involved in that testing and the conclusion was that British weapons were the way to go,as many of the weapons and calibers used were either obsolete, hard to source or the weapons were regarded as unsuitable for first-line service. Beggars can be choosers so they did end up with quite a wide range of weapons on the eve of WW 2 but they did make a strenuous effort to standardise the small arms holdings.

SupaCat95 wrote: »

How do you choose between the devil you know and the enemy you dont know. There would have been some job to dislodge the American Naval bases out of the Free State at the end of the war.

If the US had been in the Ports then Ireland would have been in the war anyway (one way or the other) and would likely have joined NATO, remember Dev floated a US-Ireland agreement post WW2 but the Americans weren’t interested. We did buy something like 10k of rifles from the States around the time of Dunkirk from memory but the US was highly hostile to us staying neutral so it was a pain in the arse to get them.

Dohvolle wrote: »

The US already had a significant presence soon after their entry into WW1 in Bantry Bay and Cork harbour and it's environs. It was only the Depression that saw them withdraw, and the facilities became abandoned, as it became more difficult to maintain staff isolated overseas.
The shenanigans that certain US diplomats carried out to weaken Free State Ireland's neutrality are worth reading about.

Not really they pulled out after the Armistice, long before the Depression.

Dohvolle wrote: »

Why did they leave so much infrastructure in place then?

What should they have done, dig up all the slipways and hangars etc? I’m presuming there might have been an agreement with the U.K. to hand them over for RN/RAF usage that never happened due to the war. Either way they had pulled out after the Armistice, not the Depression, it’s not very likely that the British Empire would have wanted a USN base in the Home Islands without a major war happening.

The LDF used mostly springfield 1903 rifles during the Emergency, only switching to the Lee Enfield when stocks became available. The Springfield fired different ammo to the Enfields. (.30-06)
Instead many of the Civil war era artillery pieces was converted from horse drawn to being truck towed.
Numerous decoy heavy weapons were also used, such as timber artillery guns etc.

SupaCat95 wrote: »

I never heard of the Irish having American rifles but I have no idea where we bought the Browning 50 Cals and 30 Cals from. Then there were the 90mm Korean war era recoilless rifles. Were these ever fired in anger?

They had American Springfield and Canadian Ross rifles. Springfields required the .30-06 round and the Ross required Canadian .303 rounds, which suited the existing stocks of British .303............the 90mm recoilless rifles were Swedish P1110 weapons and we donated them to Latvia or Lithuania. They actually packed a ferocious punch but were not really that mobile or up to date when faced with modern tanks...........refitting artillery guns with modern roadwheels instead of wooden artillery wheels was a common practise in the 1930s and our Army Staff wanted all of our artillery to be vehicle-towed as they recognised that horse-drawn guns would be too vulnerable. All of the pre-war nations aimed to achieve this and most of them did, with varying degrees of success.

SupaCat95 wrote: »

The USA wasnt neutral, it was waiting for an excuse to enter the war, Ireland was trying to keep out of the way but still cheering the Allies on from the sidelines.

Not exactly right around the 1939/40 period, FDR and some wanted to join the war, but the majority of the public were still against it, think FDR ran his 1940 campaign with pledges not to join the war for example. Nor were we really quietly cheering, there was plenty of engagement with the Allies throughout the war and in particular the period post Fall of France when there was the invasion scare.

SupaCat95 wrote: »

That wasnt strictly true we were neutral either, where did you think those Supermarine Spitfires came from? "they crashed here in good nick and the British never asked for them back?" They were given for U-Boat spotting off the south coast.

Ah, no actually the RAF were allowed to enter the state and either recover the aircraft or destroy them. We never had Spitfires in service, we bought Seafires after the war. We did manage to restore one Hurricane in 1940 (though I don't think it was flying until '42 or so), but didn't get anymore till 1943 by which time the UK sold them to us as they were no longer usable in frontline combat (or really any combat). Pretty much anything that landed/crashed but was recoverable was repaired and returned to the UK/US otherwise we'd have B17's and the like around in the AC as well.



Nor were the handful of fighters ever used for U boat spotting, the Anson and Hudson (all 3 aircraft) were for coastal patrol but lack of spares always limited their flight hours. Just as the AC was never able to sustain Hurricane operations out of Shannon either, due to lack of parts.