I couldn’t resist snapping up this little badge on eBay this week from a Russian source.
I know the Russians have a whole cottage industry churning out memorial pins for just about everything. It may well be a modern repro but is clearly very well engineered and accurate.
It comes in two versions with both GB and US flag and there are ditto for both the Hampden and the P-40. What the heck I bought the lot.
The origins and presumably the dies go back to commemorating the Lend Lease program.
Can anybody, a badge specialist perhaps, enhance our knowledge on these things.
I thought it might be a good omen for next year. 🙂
Mark
By: VoyTech - 23rd December 2004 at 12:03
Maple, are your badges also incribed in latin rather than cyryllic characters?
As far as I remember the Soviets were never very keen to commemorate the Lend Lease, as they preferred to be the ones who saved the bad capitalists from the even worse nazis and not the ones who needed assistance from said capitalists. So I would rather think this was something made for foreign tourists, or perhaps for foreign businessmen on the occasion of some trade deal.
The combination of P-40, Hampden, Spitfire, Soviet Navy and the Air Force fits nicely with the Northern Fleet as its Air Arm used all three types.
By: Maple 01 - 22nd December 2004 at 18:29
You probably noticed the Russian Naval flag and anchor and the airforce flag and wings coupled with the aircraft this would suggest, you say, commeration of lend-lease. Is the metal fairly tinny with a cheep pin on the back? If so they are probably part of a commemorative set of eight or so sold on a cardboard strip- During the Soviet era they were sold for a few roubles and usually celebrated some triumph of Soviet arms. The sets used to have one large central piece what explained what was going on and then the rest were slightly smaller and variations on a theme. The set I had was XX years of the Soviet tank arm with badges of T-34s, JS-2s etc
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December 22, 2004 at 4:39 pm