History

The Kriegsmarine Breast Eagle emblem was introduced on March 24, 1934. It was worn on the right breast of most garments, with the exception of great coats, capes, work blouses and shirts, leather jackets, and protective clothing. The breast eagle emblem used by the Kriegsmarine is identical to the one worn by the army. The only difference is in colour.

The breast eagle emblem was either made of metal or it was embroidered. The metal version was made of stamped metal and has a lateral pin to fasten it to the garment. The embroidered version could either be hand-embroidered or machine-embroidered (sometimes referred to as machine-woven).
Generally, officers wore the higher quality hand-embroidered emblems, however, due to shortages during the war, they often wore machine-embroidered emblems instead

The metal emblems are gold-coloured, except for those worn by officials, who used silver-coloured eagles.
The embroidered emblems are golden-yellow for almost all garments, except for white garments, for which the emblems are cornflower blue. Silver-grey was used for the emblems of officials.
The cloth backing for the embroidered emblems is in the colour of the uniform for which the emblem was intended. For the blue uniform, a golden-yellow eagle on a dark blue backing was used, a cornflower blue eagle on white for the white uniform, a golden-yellow eagle on a field-grey or dark blue-green backing for the field-grey uniform used by Coastal Artillery units, and a golden-yellow eagle on a brown backing for the brown Tropical uniform.