The F.T.35, sometimes marked as T.35F., is a modified version of the T.35 with a phonic device and a tissot system. It was mainly used by the Regia Marina (royal navy).
Mask overview
The face piece was made with stamped rubber of varying colours. It has two "unbreakable" glass eye pieces. The exhale valve is in the front and it's inside a phonic device made up by the exhale valve, a net cover for the valve, the trumpet, a net cover for the inside of the trumpet and the housing, which was an heavy cylinder with a thread to screw on the trumpet, which held the other pieces in place. The filter intake is at the bottom, and over it there are the inhale valve and the tissot system, which helps preventing fogging. The mask uses the standard Italian five straps system, four of which are elastic.
Pirelli F.T.35
I.A.C. T.35F.
Filter
The standard T.35 filter was a brown-painted metal box containing the various filtering substances.
Kit
The mask came inside a T.35 satchel, which sometimes had a small pocket to put the soldier's tag, and it was marked with an "F" to show the content of the satchel and the register number. The filter was usually marked with the standard navy marking paper. Depending on the manufacturing company, the kit would be provided with a stick of anti-fogging soap.
Variations
The phonic version of the T.35 was made in a slightly different manner by every company producing it, especially I.A.C. The ones made by Pirelli, Spasciani and S.I.G.L.A. are very similar to the original design, in fact, because of the large size of the phonic device there is very little space inside and that makes the tissot system very necessary, as the mask would fog up easily without it. Also, pirelli F.T. 35 have a larger trumpet, unique to this phonic mask in particular. The masks made by I.A.C. are instead quite different from regular T.35 masks, as they have a more prominent oral and nasal cavity to accomodate the extra space took by the added features.
