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The Ultimate Cold Weather Military Parka: Alpha Industries N3B Parka Review
The N3B parka, worn during Operation Deep Freeze 1 and rated to -60°F, is considered to be the warmest extreme cold parka ever created for the US military. It was later replaced with the Extended Cold Weather Clothing System.
It took a lot of time and experiments in extreme cold weather jackets to get to this one, from the military using animal hides to experimenting with fiberglass in a jacket to rejecting the use of down and feathers in these extreme jackets – screw that goose! The N3B was the first-ever masterpiece in true all-weather military-grade extreme cold clothing.
Today, we are going through a brief history of extreme cold weather jackets, talking about the strengths and weaknesses of each one, and then bringing it all home and seeing how this Alpha Industries N3B Parka Review stole all the best features from each of them. We’re also talking about a fabric that changed the world and caused riots and was supposedly made from dead bodies.
Breaking Down Today’s Cold Weather History Lesson
Hello everyone! How do you do? What I’m going to talk about today is my N3B parka, made by the Skyline Clothing Corporation in the year 1970. Why 1970, you might be asking? Well, everything after that – I don’t want to say it went poopy caca because it didn’t go poopy caca, but this era and before had a lot of goodies that modern N3Bs didn’t have.
Let’s go over today’s agenda: Number one is an overview of the US military racing to make the best extreme cold weather jacket that they could possibly make.
Number twozy woozy: There is a fabric out there that: one, was reported to be made from dead bodies when it first came out; two, people were scared it was so strong that they would get stuck in it and die; three, caused a 70,000 woman riot; four, had songs sung about it; and five, there was a little Christmas ditty sung about it when World War II ended because people were so excited that it was coming back.
Number three: Features of this jacket. Besides the snorkel hood, it’s pretty bare bones. Though there are some cool things in the pockets and a cigarette pock- okay, I’m giving it away.
And finally, number four: Depending on who you ask with regard to materials, as this jacket iterated over time, it got worse and worse and worse and worse. That might not be true, depending on certain scenarios, but we’ll be going over why it got worse and worse and worse.
The Evolution of Military Cold Weather Gear
Before we get into the history of the United States’ extreme cold military jackets over time, I have to say there are a lot of variations. There’s no way I’ll cover them all. I’m also leaving off layering systems in general, just focusing on outer piece jackets.
The greatest extreme cold weather jacket of all time, in my opinion, is the D1 mechanics jacket, but I’m also going to loop in the B3 and the B6, AKA big fat sheepskin jackets. While these were really great jackets, they were not perfect jackets. They had a lot of issues for people who wore them. When you consider all the other materials that the US military could start implementing and could start using, they were perfect for the time, but as time moved on, they were not so good.
The Down Revolution
Eddie Bauer, the B9 parka, and the Skyliner jacket essentially kicked off the down craze in the United States, and it hasn’t stopped since World War II. People are obsessed with down, and really, what happened was a lot of soldiers that were wearing the B9 parka while they were deployed were like, “Wow, this jacket is super warm, super comfortable, super light, and I don’t have to worry about it – it’s amazing!” So essentially, most people were like, “Why would I ever go back to leather or wool or anything like that?” – except the US government. They were like, “Don’t you see the problem, Edward?”
The Fishtail parka goes under the name the M48, the M51, or the M65, depending on the year it was produced, and it started off as the X48 – a parka filled with fiberglass insulation that had long fishtails at the end that could wrap around your legs to provide extra warmth. This is really where I think the US military was saying, “What is the material that is not only going to keep soldiers warm but also warm when it is wet outside?” And the US military did this by experimenting with, I think, 11 or more different types of liners on the inside.
But then literally everything changed because of the popularity of a fabric that was introduced in 1938 by the DuPont Chemical Company. Nothing was the same.
The Miracle Fabric That Changed Everything
In 1938, DuPont advertised the material that was “as strong as steel and as soft as spider silk.” They advertised it in 1938, and they didn’t release it for 2 years after, but in those 2 years, the United States of America was essentially obsessed with this magical fabric that was coming to town.
First off, after advertising and teasing this product for 2 years, DuPont released 30,000 stockings in Washington, DC, and they sold out in less than 3 hours. Then, after that, President Roosevelt’s cabinet said, “This fiber has vast and interesting economic opportunities.” Thanks, President Roosevelt’s cabinet, that was fun!
Then a news story came out that said, “Hey Americans, you know that new miracle fiber that you love? Well, it uses cadaverine, which is from dead bodies. How do you like that?” And the US population was like, “That’s insane! Are you serious?” And DuPont was like, “No, we find that very yucky actually. It’s made from coal.”
This fiber that was introduced in 1938 and took America by storm by DuPont company was nylon.
The Great Nylon Wars
So nylon hit the scene in the 1940s and essentially broke whatever the equivalent of the internet was back then – the telegraph – and people went nuts. It was dramatically stronger than cotton at the same weight, and it was cheaper to make. And if we look at DuPont’s slogan, there was one more thing: “If it’s nylon, it’s prettier, and oh, how fast it dries!”
DuPont couldn’t make a ton of nylon, so we actually found two groups that were pitted against each other, fighting to see who could get their share of nylon. The first was people who wore stockings in the United States of America, and the second was the most powerful military force that the planet had ever seen. Believe it or not, the military won, and women who wore stockings couldn’t get their stockings, which then led to the start of the nylon riots.
40,000 women in Pittsburgh and 30,000 women in New York lined up for only 13,000 pairs of stockings, which led to fights and obviously huge lines and angry people and everything like that, which caused people to write their congressmen to have DuPont license nylon production out. And then the government was like, “No, you really have to do it,” and they shared the licensing. That’s nylon, baby!
The Ultimate N3B Feature Breakdown
Okay, so before we bring everything home because I do realize there’s a lot of stuff up in the air right now, we have to go over the features of the N3B parka from least coolest to coolest:
1. Internal hidden storm cuffs
2. Little ugly faux leather pocket reinforcements
3. Big fat dump-dump pockets
4. A very short zipper base so that way you don’t have to bend down because what could happen is if you get flanked by an enemy while you’re zipping – prime spank position!
5. True hand warmer pockets
6. Synthetic fur-lined hood
7. Coyote fur-trimmed hood
8. Not only do we have a spank-proof zipper, but we also have a storm placket under it to prevent wind and snow from coming in, and we also have a storm placket over it to extra prevent wind and snow from coming in.
9. All of the pockets are lined with wool batting.
10. A nifty pocket on the arm which was apparently used to hold cigarettes while you were out and about, and if you really wanted to, pens and pencils.
11. Finally, this parka is famously called the snorkel parka, and that is for the hood – it is very snorkel-like. When it’s done up, we have an absolute tunnel that is very, very hard for wind and snow to enter, keeping your face nice and warm and toasty.
Why the N3B Was a Game-Changer
Now, to answer the question and bring it all home: Why did the N3B parka work? The biggest, most challenging thing was how do we keep soldiers or whoever is wearing this jacket warm when wet, but also make sure that what they’re wearing isn’t super waterlogged and heavy and terrible to wear. It dries fast, and it’s comfortable after it gets wet.
So, with that being said, the N3B was pulling more from the B3 and B6 than the B9, which was down-filled, because while the B9 was warmer and lighter than the B3 and B6 and it had a hood, as you probably know when down gets wet – especially down from the 1940s – it is essentially useless because it compresses and you’re just left with cotton and squished down.
The B3 and B6 are made out of shearling, which, even when wet, does still insulate, but when those shearling jackets got wet, they got wet, and they stayed very wet, and they were heavy and waterlogged, and leather does a lot of weird things like dry and crack when it gets wet, so it’s not the best for wet conditions.
So then we look at the B11 and fishtail parkas, which got rid of the shearling outer and used wool padding on the inside. So they took away the skin, which was great because all of a sudden, you had all the properties of wool without the downsides of leather being on the outside of it. But even then, the B11 and the fishtail parkas were still having an issue, and that issue was that they were still not drying fast enough.
The Material Evolution: From Nylon to Cotton Blend
The outside of those jackets was cotton, and when cotton comes in contact with water, it absorbs it like crazy – it sucks it right up. This essentially means if your jacket gets wet and it’s filled with wool, it has an even harder time drying and ridding itself of all that water and all that extra weight, which is no good, so then we have nylon. This is where there’s a really cool material dance with the N3 series in general. You may have noticed in this article that I’m talking a lot about nylon, but my parka doesn’t look like it’s made of nylon because it’s not totally made of nylon.
Initially, before the N3B, there was the N3, and there was also the N3A. The N3, the N3A, and early N3Bs were made of 100% nylon and they are very shiny – they look like silk. Nylon, as you know, dries incredibly fast, so I think that solved the US military’s problem of how can we get this jacket to dry faster. Well, if the outside dries very fast, it gives what is in between the jacket a much easier time to dry so that wool padding also dries much, much faster.
But why is mine, made in the ’70s, not nylon, you may be asking. I believe there are two reasons: Number one: We introduced the blend. It didn’t have to be 100% cotton, it didn’t have to be 100% nylon – it could be a blend of both. So you get the best of both worlds: you get the added breathability of cotton with the toughness and quick-drying aspects of nylon. Genius!
The other thing, though, like I said when we were going over the features of this jacket, is the fur on the inside of the hood is no longer mouton – it is now synthetic, and we started to introduce synthetic insulation instead of wool insulation, which solves the outside problem. Now, we can go back to cotton because synthetic insulation allows you to make a warmer jacket, because it’s lighter than wool insulation and dries faster. So now we’re not worried about the inside drying that fast, so we can go back to a heavier cotton blend, which is comfier for the person wearing it, and then that’s the N3B.
And I’m assuming the military also switched to a heavier blend of cotton because nylon and synthetic materials are just very bad around fire. You don’t really want to be wearing a plastic bag if it’s on fire for a multitude of reasons – you’d probably much rather be wearing cotton.
So then the question is, why do some people feel like the new ones aren’t as good? Synthetic materials over time compress, they lose their effectiveness, and they don’t look as pretty as time goes on – not to say they aren’t incredible jackets, but that’s why.
Watch This Review
Buh Bye!
Thank you so much for reading this Alpha Industries N3B parka review! I will see you all very soon. I hope you’re having a nice day or week, whatever it may be.
This article was adapted from Michael Kristy’s video on The Iron Snail, with edits from FashionBeans, and was reviewed by Michael to ensure the integrity of his original content. Watch the full video here.
The Iron Snail is a men’s fashion vlog (and now article series!) starring a young man named Michael and featuring a snail no bigger than a quarter. The two are set on taking over the world of fashion by creating a clothing line to end all clothing lines. Until then, we’re here to tell you EVERYTHING you need to know about the best clothing out there, from the highest quality raw denim jeans to the warmest jackets to the sturdiest boots…the Iron Snail has got you covered.