When 5th Airborne Brigade was set up in 1983, like its predecessor 16 Para Bde, it used DZ flashes made by units tailors from whatever materials they had to hand. These were later replaced by the standard merrowed edged versions still used today. The Pathfinder Platoon was a small and ‘off the books’ unit for its early life and certainly used tailor made DZ flashes like the one shown in this thread. (Such DZ flashes did fade and loose colour, which is probably why the standardised merrowed edge versions became issue items, as they are colour-fast).
I don’t know whether this DZ flash is an original from the early 1980s or a more modern reproduction, but they have been copied.
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