Hungary Hungarian General's Peaked Cap - 1956 to 1989

[Gordon Craig]

Gentlemen,

In this thread I will show pictures of a Hungarian Army General's peaked cap from the communist period. The caps were medium brown in colour with a lighter brown plastic peak. The cap band is a different material than the crown of the cap. More like a velvet texture than the other material. There is a thin red band around the crown. The interior is lined with a red nylon type of material. There is a plastic sweat shield with a slot for the name. There are no makers marks on the sweat shieled or anywhere else in the cap. The chin strap is made of three strands of gold fibre attached to two split pin type gold buttons with a raised pattern of oak leaves and crossed rifles. Officers below the rank of general also wore a chin strap of three gold strands but these strands were slightly thinner than those used on a generals cap. The split pin buttons were the same as those used on the standard officers cap. The general's cap badge was quite different from the regular officer cockade. Below are pictures of the front, side, interior and a close up of the split pin buttons.

Edited December 1, 2006 by Gordon Craig

[Gordon Craig]

Next are pictures of the front and rear of the general's cap badge. The badges are held in place by three prongs. Two on either side at the bottom and one at the top on the star. In the example shown the top pin has been broken off but you can see where it was attached.

[Gordon Craig]

Next I will post pictures of a current musician officers cap. There two reasons for posting this particular cap.

1-It is similar to a generals cap because of the red stripe around the crown. It has a red cap band and is often sold as a general's cap from the communist era. Musician officer's peaked caps from the communist era looked almost exactly the same in design.

2-As a size comparison between officers hats worn during the period 1956-1989 and those worn now to enable collectors to tell a communist era officers hat from a post communist era cap. In particular a general's cap.

When the first elected government, following the communist regime, took office in 1990 few changes took place to the actual uniforms worn by the Hungarian armed forces. Other than cap badge changes things remained relatively the same. The buttons remained the same. Over time since then uniforms have undergone some changes. One of those was in the officers peaked caps. When viewed separately the caps from the two periods appear identical. Howere, in fact the later caps are lighter in colour and are slightly taller. When sitting on a flat surface, the communist era hat measures 14 cms (5.5 inches) from the tip of the peak to the top of the crown. The current cap measures 15.8 cms (6.5 inches) from the tip of the peak to the top of the crown. Here are some photos of the current cap for comparison purposes.

Regards,

Gordon

[hunyadi]

Nice info Gordon - how about the measurments on that earlier BG hat??

[Gordon Craig]

Gents,

Charles has asked about the measurements of my communist era Border Guard enlisted man?s peaked cap. All of the individual measurements of the cap are very close to that of the Generals cap but on the same flat surface it measures only 13.5 cm to the top of the crown. Overall, it is also the same shape as the general?s cap.

The Hungarian Boarder Guards traditionally use green as their arm of service colour. This is indicated on this cap by the green band around the crown and the green cap band. Enlisted men wore plastic chin straps, bronze cap buttons, and a bronze cap cockade. NCOs wore these same items in silver.

The cap cockade on this hat is believed to be of the early type. There are two types of cockades on communist era Hungarian caps. Those with a red star raised above the surface, as is clear in this photo, and those where the cockade is flat and the red star is below the surface of the cockade. My research has not revealed in what time period these two cockades were worn. I believe the change was made from the raised ones to the flat ones because of breakage to the stars. You often find the raised stars either loose so they will turn, as is the case on this cap, or with the tips of the stars broken off.

Something I didn?t mention in my first posts was that the sweat shield in communist era caps and post era cap is the same shape but that the post communist period sweat shields are physically, and noticeably, larger. Also, why go to these lengths to detail the differences between the caps of these two eras? For one main reason, there are lots of caps being released by the Hungarian Ministry Of Defence and they do not have a cockade attached. Since the caps are not marked, and look almost identical, physical dimensions are the only way you can tell the hats from the two different eras apart. I mentioned earlier that in 1990 the only real change was the cap badge. Hats worn during the communist era were still worn until new uniform regulations were written and the new uniforms and caps were produced. Here are some pictures of the Border Guard cap.

Regards,

Gordon

[Gordon Craig]

The last of the series of pictures of the enlisted man's cap.

Gordon