Tiger Stripe Camouflage (Part 3)

Other Tiger Stripe Camouflage Patterns

Tiger stripe is the name of a group of camouflage patterns developed for close-range use in dense jungle during jungle warfare by the South Vietnamese Armed Forces and adopted in late 1962 to early 1963 by US Special Forces during the Vietnam War.

Dating to the 1960s, the vertical pattern seen below was produced in South Korea and is printed on heavy cotton HBT fabric. Surviving samples of this pattern suggest it was privately acquired by US military personnel and may have been worn in theater during the Vietnam War, or on TDY in Asia.

Commercial Tiger Patterns

Widespread production of tiger stripe camouflage patterns for commercial sale grew out of their popularity with special operations personnel during the Vietnam War, and the subsequent association with elite status by neighboring Asian countries during the immediate postwar years. It is easy to postulate that most of the major factories in Asia producing other types of fabrics for commercial sporting purposes at one time or another probably produced some sort of tiger pattern, if not a number of them. Insofar as we are aware, there has been no attempt to catalogue the variety of commercially sold tiger patterns since the mid-1970s, much less to track down and catalogue the individual factories or companies that produced them. In many cases, uniforms sold in military surplus stores or out of adventurer magazines in the 1980s and beyond were often labeled only with the name of the company that marketed them, rather than the one that manufactured them. This leaves collectors of tiger patterns in a quandry over how to categorize or even document the vast number of tiger stripe designs that have hit eh commercial markets for the past fifty years. As a documentarian almost exclusively of military issue camouflage designs, I have never developed a habit of collecting commercially sold tiger garments, but will upload these as I find them (or as they are submitted by visitors) so that we may begin some sort of record documenting the huge number of designs out there.

In business since the 1984, Tiger Stripe Products got its start by faithfully reproducing one of the original South Vietnamese tiger stripe designs worn by both ARVN and US personnel during the Vietnam War. The original textiles and clothing was manufactured in Thailand, but production was later switched to the United States in 1985, where products were sold directly to the public through retail catalog companies such as Brigade Quartermasters®, U.S. Cavalry®, and Quartermaster Uniform®. The company has since introduced other patterns based on the original design but utilizing a different color palette or alternative design features. Tiger Stripe Products also has a large number of patterns available to license that are not currently in production. These include All Terrain Tiger NT3 Snow, the MilCam series, the StrikeCam series, the Spec-Ops Tiger series, and many others.

The original Vietnam Tiger Stripe Pattern™ design is copied from the "John Wayne Dense" (a term coined by author and collector Richard Denis Johnson) design that was produced during the Vietnam War and saw extensive use by Vietnamese and American (as well as some Australian SAS) personnel.

The Desert Tiger™ pattern was introduced shortly before Operation Desert Storm in 1991, and the original production run was purchased by the US Marine Corps for evalulation and deployed with Marine Corps special operations personnel, receiving favorable reviews of its performance in desert combat environments. The pattern has since become a favorite of other American and foreign special operators, and saw use in both Iraq and Afghanistan during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).

The pattern here is an accurate copy of the Vietnam war era "tadpole sparse" design, as designated in Richard D. Johnson's book, Tiger Patterns. The garment from which this tile was created was manufactured by Propper International in the 1996 contract year, and does have the contract number that Propper uses for military contracts, so it may have actually been sold to the US military at some point.

Bearing some similarities to late-war camouflage designs, including those made in Thailand, the pattern seen below is a classic example of a commercial tiger design that is not directly derived from the Vietnam War era prints. Additionally, the color palette is considerably darker than those printed during the 1960s, using black, medium-to-dark brown, and dark olive green stripes on a light olive green background. This design, and many like it, were quite commonly encountered in military surplus/outfitter stores during the late 1980s and well beyond the 1990s. The exact source for this tile is from a Rothco garment, made in China in the early 2000s.

This tiger pattern appears to be based on the same set of screens as the above, but having much finer detail to the individual stripes, particularly the black stripes, which have small open regions or "islands" interspersed along their length. The color palette has a more greenish appearance, with the brown and olive shades blending into each other, rather than contrasting with each other. This design, although marketed by the US Company Atlanco, was probably printed in China for export in the 2000s.

Another variation of the above design, this version can barely be identified as a four-color pattern except at very close range. The browns and greens almost completely blend into each other, giving the appearance of only black and olive stripes. Of undetermined origins, this "muted tiger pattern" was another commonly encountered variant in the 1990s and early 2000s, and probably exported to multiple manufacturers around the world. This particular sample was taken from trousers that have no particular manufacturing company identified on either of the labels, although they were reputedly made in the USA.

Featuring a virtually identical colorway to the above design, this tiger pattern has blotchier stripes and a much shorter repeat pattern. Again, it does not appear to have been copied from a 1960s era design, but may have been roughly influenced by one or more of them. The fabric is heavy ripstop, produced in China and marketed by the C.O.R.P. Incorporated company.