By the time I bought any parachute material, it was camoflaged, nylon, and Vietnam era. (We used it to make deer stands, cut into strips about 4 ft. wide and wrapped around available brush or three/four stakes. It was easy to carry, and worked pretty well.)
There’s actually a website called ParachuteHistory dot com.
According to this article, Silk parachutes were used in WWII.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Were_silk_or_nylon_parachutes_in_world_war2
Another article indicates nylon parachutes were used in WWII, apparently both silk and nylon parachutes were used.
“When nylon was patented in 1937, its benefits as parachute mterial quickly became apparent. Researchers used dead weights until Adeline Gray made the first jump in the United States, using a nylon parachute in 1942. Ms. Gray, who worked as a parachute riger at the Pioneer Parachute Company, jumped from an aircraft flying out of Brainard Field in Hartford, Conneticut.”
This link is broken because I didn’t want to cause side scroll, copy and paste the entire link to read the article:
http://books.google.com/books?id=XHLhuMs_QFQC&pg=PA163&lpg=PA163&dq=nylon
+parachutes&source=web&ots=SpMSpXnOe6&sig=7EvrKMCqpFvSp-TcSWxmWjm90jU&hl=en