Tanks at the school gates? San Diego school police acquires its own MRAP

[happyslug]

18. I agreed, but my point was there was such a program...

The difference is most of the equipment used during WWII had started out as civilian equipment and then converted for military use, so conversion back was no big deal. This included Trucks, Jeeps, and even planes along with communication equipment (mostly radios and field phones). In addition to ammo originally made for weapons designed for Police and civilians but that the Military adopted as a war necessity (People forget that even POODLES where "drafted" into the K9 corps during WWII for guard dog purposes, you had a shortage of EVERYTHING during WWII and the gap was filled by Civilian Goods).

In Iraq, the situation was different, very little civilian equipment was used and as the guerilla warfare increased, light trucks, which have the most Civilian usage potential, were replaced by armored bomb resistant Trucks (which have limited or no Civilian Usage Potential). After WWII the Army wanted to get rid of the Civilian items for items designed for actual military use, thus the transfer of equipment was mostly giving away mostly barely converted civilian material.

The problem with Iraq what the Army no longer wants is NOT the Humvees or the new 2 1/2 tons trucks the Army manage to obtain while fighting in Iraq, but the special purpose bomb resistant trucks made to operate in an area with a hostile civilian population. These have limited civilian use for the simple reason they were design to operate when the civilian population not only want the operators of those trucks dead, they are doing ACTIVE things to obtain that desire.

As to clothing, after WWII, there was a severe shortage of clothing. Enlistees prior to Vietnam NEVER wore Civilian clothes. They were expected to wear their uniforms at all times. When they were released, they were ordered NEVER to wear those clothes again, but obtain Civilian Wear. The problem was at the end of WWII they was NO civilian Clothes to obtain, so discharged soldiers had to wear they uniforms for months after they were discharged. To address this problem the "Ruptured Duck" was invented. It was a sewed on Eagle that by its designed showed you had been discharged and no longer subject to Military authority even through you were still wearing a uniform.

Now most discharged veterans obtain civilian clothes as soon as they could, but in the post WWII era that could takes weeks and sometimes months. Thus you had men wearing "Military Uniforms" during the post WWII era. On the other hand the police saw no need to adopt such clothing for themselves for it was NOT the fashion to look like you some sort of Special forces to combat crime. Thus police did not wear military uniforms, but civilians did in the post WWII era.

Side note: During WWII if you went into combat you were expected to wear a tie for that was part of your uniform (Most front line soldiers discarded it, but Patton made a big deal of any soldier under his command who did not have a tie on). The uniform may be Green instead of blue but in many ways it was similar to what police officers were wearing. Paratroopers wore uniforms with large cargo pockets on their legs, like modern Battle Dress Uniforms, but regular soldiers did not. Thus post WWII Police wore a uniform much like what WWII soldiers had worn, right down to the tie (or open collar button).

About 1980 the US Army adopted its Battle Dress Uniform (BDU) and SWAT teams and other Police started to dress up in them. You can say this is new, but if you remember what the WWII Uniform was, the Police did the same thing during that time period, except they kept the uniform blue.

As to the tie and the uniform during WWII, it even made the cartoon in Stars and Stripes. One of the running lines during WWII was soldiers "Behind the front lines enough NOT to get shot at, but close enough to get away without wearing a tie". Yes ties were part of the WWII uniform even when soldiers went into combat. Most soldiers ignored that requirement but ever so often someone tried to enforce it.

http://www.awon.org/willie/willie2.html