Airforce survival scarf

[Laurence Strong]

This is my most treasured item as it belonged to my Mom. She lived in Belgium during the war, and she told me that after the war they used to take these silk scarves and dye them and make dresses etc out of them. Are these seen often and what would it be worth, more for insurance than any other reason. I have only the 1 scan at the momment, It has plate's "C" & "D" on it. I will get a full photo of both sides tommorow when it's daylight out.

[Guest paracollector]

These are also known as "Evasion Maps" or "Escape and Evasion Maps". These were pretty standard issue to aircrew during the war with the contents of the map covering the particular area of operations. Most guys carried these folded up in a pocket, though some would sew them inside of their jackets. I've never heard of someone wearing one as a scarf, though anything is possible I guess.

As for value, while very cool, they do not fetch the prices of "Blood Chits", which is to bad because some of these are very rare. If you wanted to go down that path in your collecting, you could spend the rest of you life collecting the hundreds of variations of the WW2 versions of these maps.

Since this is a treasured part of your collection (for reasons I fully agree with), you should think about having it professionally conserved. Over time, improperly stored or displayed silk can do some pretty strange things. This is definately something that should be passed down.

John

[Laurence Strong]

Hi John

Thanks for the help. Should I check out a Museum to see about conserving? There's a military one in Calgary, It's called "The Museum of the Regiments" ans deals mostley with Albertas Regiments.

[JamesM]

Laurence,

If you get tired of it, it would look nice with the RCAF escape button I have!!!

Cheers,

James

[leigh kitchen]

Is this actually an escape map, or simply a map used by aircrew?

[perce]

Looks like an escape map-the aircrew maps were more substantial

I've got one that covers France and Belgium

although I believe in the 50's/60's a company made scarves for the civillian high street market that looked like escape maps and have been sold as such

Cheers

Perce

[Brian Wolfe]

Is this actually an escape map, or simply a map used by aircrew?

Hi Leigh,

It's an escape map. My father still has one of his as well as photos of himself taken by the RCAF and carried by the airmen in case they were shot down and managed to contact the underground. The photo would then be used for a fake I.D. or passport.

Very nice item.

Cheers

Brian

[leigh kitchen]

Yes, nice - I have a couple of silk maps somewhere, but as far as I could make out ,they're "normal" RAF maps rather than escape maps, I think one covers the area of Sweden, the other part of Russia, but I'd need a map to find them, wherever they are in the garage.

I read that the sort of map I have are often passed off as escape maps which obviously command a better price than the ?15 I paid about 6 years ago.