# What exactly are storm flaps on trench coats for?



## hghevans (May 20, 2008)

I have thrifted and otherwise obtained several trench coats, and while I am able to identify a storm flap, I have no idea what the point of one is. Is its function something really obvious which I am missing, or is it just the case that they now vestigial in the way that D-rings are?

Thanks.


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## CuffDaddy (Feb 26, 2009)

To prevent wind-driven rain from coming into the garment through button-holes or zipper teeth. 

If you're really out in the weather for an extending period, and are counting on the coat to keep you dry, they're somewhat important. Zippers aren't waterproof.


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## PJC in NoVa (Jan 23, 2005)

To help secure the neck opening against leakage in driving rain. Soldiers in the Great War didn't get to carry umbrellas.


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## norton (Dec 18, 2008)

A double layer around the shoulders, where the most water falls and sits. 

Originally trenchcoats weren't completely waterproof, just a very tight water resistant weave. This just makes it take longer for the water to soak through. Same with the old wool capes you see in the movies set before the 19th century. They always had an extra layer on the shoulders.


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## David V (Sep 19, 2005)

While your post refered to storm flap I'm inclined to believe you are refering to the flap over the right breast. I have always heard it called a "gun flap".


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## PJC in NoVa (Jan 23, 2005)

norton said:


> A double layer around the shoulders, where the most water falls and sits.
> 
> Originally trenchcoats weren't completely waterproof, just a very tight water resistant weave. This just makes it take longer for the water to soak through. Same with the old wool capes you see in the movies set before the 19th century. They always had an extra layer on the shoulders.


That's the cape, not the storm flap. The storm flap is that "throat latch" thing that you can button snugly across the neck of the coat, not the extra fabric layer over the upper back. Both features are meant to enhance weather resistance, of course.

Here's an Aquascutum trench w/ its storm flap buttoned to the back of the coat's collar, in "storage" position:










The gun flap is the extra piece of fabric at the front of the right shoulder/chest area, meant to keep the main body of the coat from early wear due to the firing of a weapon. On this coat it has a buttonhole so that it can be battened down as a further way of keeping the weather out:


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## a tailor (May 16, 2005)

David V said:


> While your post refered to storm flap I'm inclined to believe you are refering to the flap over the right breast. I have always heard it called a "gun flap".


yes you are right. the officers tcoats had an opening under the gun flap. the purpose was to easily reach the pistol in its chest holster. the flap kept off the rain.


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## hghevans (May 20, 2008)

*Oh, I see...*

Thanks very much, that really clears that up, it seems that I could not in fact identify the storm flap, I meant the gun flap. Very interesting, thanks very much. So, the gun flap is in fact a bit pointless nowadays, as is the cape, given that today's trench coats are waterproof and we don't tend to shoot in trench coats anymore...?


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## norton (Dec 18, 2008)

hghevans said:


> So, the gun flap is in fact a bit pointless nowadays, as is the cape, given that ........ and we don't tend to shoot in trench coats anymore...?


Speak for your self. :icon_smile_big:

Actually, there is no such thing as a gun flap on a trench coat. Its a misnomer.


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## eagle2250 (Mar 24, 2006)

a tailor said:


> yes you are right. the officers tcoats had an opening under the gun flap. the purpose was to easily reach the pistol in its chest holster. the flap kept off the rain.


I've worn a trench coat for much of my adult life and must admit, I never knew that. This is the kind of thing that makes these fora so fascinating to me...thanks much, Alex, for this latest pearl of sartorial insight!


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## PJC in NoVa (Jan 23, 2005)

norton said:


> Speak for your self. :icon_smile_big:
> 
> Actually, there is no such thing as a gun flap on a trench coat. Its a misnomer.


Okay, I'll bite: What do you call that extra piece of fabric over the front of the right shoulder/upper-chest area?


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## norton (Dec 18, 2008)

PJC in NoVa said:


> Okay, I'll bite: What do you call that extra piece of fabric over the front of the right shoulder/upper-chest area?


storm flap. See: 
https://www.thefedoralounge.com/showthread.php?t=124&highlight=gunflap

starting at post 263 on page 14.

Having an opening under it to reach for a gun in a shoulder holster makes sense, except they seem too high and small. Also I don't believe shoulder holsters were that common pre WW II. I believe the trench coat was a part of WW I uniform (hence "trench"). Also, you would think that if it was to access a gun it would always be on the left side, if not both sides.


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## Cottonshirt (Mar 15, 2009)

Norton said:


> Having an opening under it to reach for a gun in a shoulder holster makes sense, except they seem too high and small. Also I don't believe shoulder holsters were that common pre WW II. I believe the trench coat was a part of WW I uniform (hence "trench"). Also, you would think that if it was to access a gun it would always be on the left side, if not both sides.


When I read Alex explanation that gun flaps were for access to chest holsters I thought it a little too cute to be true. I spent some time on the web trying to find a picture of an officer in any army wearing a chest holster sufficiently high and to the right to be accessed in this way. I failed to find one, but I also did not try particularly long because I had take the g/f shopping.

I looked at Wikipedia; not the most reliable source but not a bad place to start some research. On the page for Trench Coat it says the coat was worn only by officers, was not obligatory for them but no other ranks could wear them. This then made me wonder whether the "protection from the recoil of a rifle" version of the story can be true. In 1910 (or thereabouts) officers didn't carry rifles. An officer was far more likely to have a pistol and a sword than a rifle; rifles were for les poilu. So if an officer didn't habitually have a rifle why would a coat that can only be worn by officers have flaps to protect the coat from wear under the recoil of a weapon the officer didn't have?

Additionally, why do ladies coats have them only on the left-hand side; are all ladies left handed shots? Clearly not, but all ladies coats button to the left and require their weather protection flaps on the left.

I think the answer Norton has found must be correct, it is for closing the right-hand side of the coat against heavy rain.

This would mean that hghevans was correct in his OP in referring to it as a storm flap, and PJC erred in calling it a gun flap. But PJC did make a valuable point. If the shoulder flap is the storm flap, what is the collar "throat latch" thing that PJC referred to, really called?


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## PJC in NoVa (Jan 23, 2005)

Maybe the button-on flap that goes across the throat is called the "throat latch"?

I can see the logic of "storm flap" for that piece of material at the front of the right shoulder.

TTBOMK, trench coats don't date from before the war, but were developed during the war, at a point when officers on foot and at the front were well past the thought of wearing swords (if indeed they ever had worn them). I know British officers carried Webley revolvers with long lanyards worn around their necks and attached to a swivel ring on the bottom of the pistol's grip, as shown in this photo of a post-WWI Webley:


I believe these revolvers went into belt holsters worn at the waist, on the left side (for a righthanded man) with butt reversed so it was facing forward in the natural "draw" position for someone reaching down and across his body with his right hand. I've never seen a photo of a WWI British officer wearing a shoulder holster; that would be an interesting find.

I've also read that some British officers went into action completely unarmed--I recall an account of some on the first day of the Somme who stepped off to the attack with nothing but swagger sticks and perhaps whistles, the idea (possibly owing something to the British class system, and something to notions of tactical effectiveness through proper division of labor) being that an officer's job was to direct his men's application of violence, not to apply it individually himself.


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## hghevans (May 20, 2008)

*Throat latch*

I always assumed that the strip of material allowing the collar to be tightened against the elements was simply called a throat latch, as it is in the context of tweed blazers when they are present there.

I have a book on trench coats, looking through it there is a diagram of an old Aquascutum one in which the flap of material on the uper right hand side of the chest is indeed referred to as a storm flap, rather than a gun flap... It does not refer to its function though.


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## nicksull (Sep 1, 2005)

PJC in NoVa said:


> Maybe the button-on flap that goes across the throat is called the "throat latch"?
> 
> I can see the logic of "storm flap" for that piece of material at the front of the right shoulder.
> 
> ...


First Burberry with recogniseable trenchcoat details im aware of was the Tielocken available commercially (to order privately) from around 1905 (although a design for an officer coat was sent to the War Office as early as 1901/2). To my mind most officers would have worn the pistol on a belt outside the coat anyway rather than inside. If anything a flap buttoning the coat to the right shoulder would hinder an officer's chances of withdrawing a gun not help them. The lanyard was knotted long enough to allow the wearer to fire his weapon at arms length but not long enough to allow the pistol to fall in the mud at a critical moment,; when not in use i think the holster would come into play.

The most logical explanation of the flap Id say (although i long believed and liked the rifle recoil theory) as stated by others is to act as a waterbarrier to stop rainwater running off the shoulder under the front flap and into the coat. As with any waterproof coat, the problem is often not the cloth of a coat but the points where we try to get into and out of it - ie the openings and sleeves. 
To have a women's storm flap on the opposite shoulder would rather confirm this since women's coats do close the other way.

I wonder though too if being developed in peace time Thomas Burberry was just hedging his bets when he filed to the War Office. Presumably the trenchcoat was as viable for motoring or dealing with British weather as it was for the trenches. Which would tend to support the closure function of the flap rather than the gun connection.


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## PJC in NoVa (Jan 23, 2005)

Fascinating stuff. I found this pic of a Tielocken coat (its feature was that it had almost no buttons, but could supposedly be "locked" against the weather by being belted or "tied"), from a Burberrys ad that must date from during the war (look at the background), though I could not find which year:



An article online said that Burberrys began marketing the precursor to the trenchcoat to British officers during the Boer War, whose timeframe would coincide with the 1901/2 date given above.


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## GBR (Aug 10, 2005)

A Trench coat is essentially derived from a military garment (hence name from where it was worn) and the storm flap was to be fastened in a storm where you might expect wind driven rain.

The answer is not obscure and was actually staring you in the face.


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## nicksull (Sep 1, 2005)

GBR said:


> A Trench coat is essentially derived from a military garment (hence name from where it was worn) and the storm flap was to be fastened in a storm where you might expect wind driven rain.
> 
> The answer is not obscure and was actually staring you in the face.


You have an amusingly abrupt manner today GBR....

I think you'll find that just because a trenchcoat is called a trenchcoat does not mean it was designed expressly for that purpose (it originated more than 10 years earlier than WW1). The name came later, from experience of the conditions in which the war was fought, evidently.

And 'storm flap' as rain excluder is only a 100% satisfactory explanation if you accept that it is not actually a gun flap, an equally common (tho as we saw probably erroneous) term for it. Which was the other point under discussion. And what else oh yeah and it was interesting too.


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