kamouflage.net camouflage data

Uncover your potential', indeed! Once you stop ogling the girl, though, you might notice that this Australian Special Air Service (SAS) recruiting poster shows Australian Disruptive Pattern Camouflage to very good effect. [Image courtesy Brad Turner collection.]

'Desant na Drvar' camouflage
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Although it is frequently identified as a Yugoslav pattern from World War II, the camouflage shown on this page was in fact created solely for use in Fadil Hadzic's 1963 movie, Desant na Drvar ('Raid on Drvar'). Presumably the connection with the Second World War has been made because Desant is a depiction of a WW2 German action, Operation Rösselsprung, in which Waffen-SS and Luftwaffe forces aimed to disrupt the command structure of the Yugoslav partisans by eliminating their headquarters and capturing their commander, Marshal Josip Broz Tito. In the movie, the pattern shown here was actually intended to represent Luftwaffe-Splittermuster 41, a German camouflage pattern; indeed, some surviving smocks from Desant still retain poorly-made reproduction Luftwaffe insignia.

Having said all this, there is nevertheless some evidence to suggest that some of these movie props might also have seen service, much later, with the Liberation Army of Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac (Albanian: Ushtria Çlirimtare e Preshevës, Medvegjës dhe Bujanocit, UÇPMB) — a guerrilla group, which operated from 21 June 1999 to 26 May 2001.

The goal of the UÇPMB was to secede the municipalities of Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and unite them with a future independent Kosovo; and like the earlier Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA; Albanian: Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës, UÇK), the UÇPMB used any camouflage uniforms that they could find, capture or smuggle.

The fact that one Desant smock was recently acquired among a batch of camouflage uniforms that were used during the Kosovo War certainly suggests that it might have been used by at least one of the combatants. Moreover, it is known that some UÇPMB fighters wore obsolete JNA camouflage smocks that dated from the 1960s and were, therefore, coæval with smocks from Desant. It is therefore possible that some of these movie props saw service with the UÇPMB. Unfortunately there is, as yet, no photographic evidence known to support the claim; and so it remains purely conjectural, for now.

kamouflage.net is grateful to SRPSKA PRODAVNICA and Steve Hoeger, for their invaluable contribution to this article.

camouflage data