Leather Flying Jackets...

[Jonathan]

You're killing me. No .45, sheesh. I'm out of town but will post pics when I get back.

[johnmdesigner]

Some pretty impressive P-47 footage with vintage apparel.

1945 Last Days of Air War in Europe - Part 1 of 2 - YouTube

[Heronseye]

The second video (part 2) blew me away. Thanks for posting.

Some pretty impressive P-47 footage with vintage apparel.

1945 Last Days of Air War in Europe - Part 1 of 2 - YouTube

[Jaq]

I've got an A2; it's well-made, but I don't know by whom. Got it when I got my pilot's ticket. The company I love for this sorta thing, though, is Eastman Leather. I've got one of their B3s; it's - bad pun intended - the bomb. But in taking it out to get a pic to post, I noticed some damage to one of shoulders, so thank goodness for this thread. Now I can get it fixed.

[Jaq]

While I'm at it (checking my leather coats for damage), here's a pic of my Eastman Leather Irvin. It's a model of the standard RAF sheepskin jacket. It's by far and away my favorite jacket, but as I get older, it seems damned determined to remain a size 40.

Thank god for cycling.

[Jaq]

Btw, I got so caught up in my leather flying jackets that I completely forgot to say HOLY SHIT, CHANCE. YOUR DAD FLEW WITH ZEMKE'S WOLF PACK!?!?! Zemke was one of my honest-to-goodness heroes growing up. Him and Gabreski and Johnson and Mahurin and all the others. I read so many stories, biographies, made God knows how many models. I'm not exaggerating when I say that they and all their comrades were a huge part of the reason I learned to fly.

To that end, so was your dad. I can't begin to express what all that's meant to me. I can only give thanks.

[busdriver1959]

Ganreski's son flies where I do. Nice kid.

[RickM]

Btw, I got so caught up in my leather flying jackets that I completely forgot to say HOLY SHIT, CHANCE. YOUR DAD FLEW WITH ZEMKE'S WOLF PACK!?!?! Zemke was one of my honest-to-goodness heroes growing up. Him and Gabreski and Johnson and Mahurin and all the others. I read so many stories, biographies, made God knows how many models. I'm not exaggerating when I say that they and all their comrades were a huge part of the reason I learned to fly.

To that end, so was your dad. I can't begin to express what all that's meant to me. I can only give thanks.

Yeah, my Dad was not in that rarified innder circle, although he was buddies with Gabreski and Schilling - all western Pennsylvania boys from shithole towns. Watch the videos posted above by johnmdesigner. They are riveting. The ground attack work, (the P-47 was a great ground attack platform) was what scared my Dad the most...and it was often horrible work. Strafing trains, strafing troops on the ground....my Dad's words; "My God...it was horrible...but you had to do it.."
He also said that ground attack was where he was most concerned about being shot down. He really kind of backed into being a pilot...never flew after the war...and actually hated flying commercially unless he was fairly hammered. I have a box full of pictures and a very few verbal anecdotes from him. He did not like talking about it. He used to laugh derisively at shows like "12 O'Clock High" that romanticized/sanitized the whole thing. They used to ship the pilots off to english country houses on a regular basis...where they'd drink to the point of insensibility in order to try to calm down and pull themselves together...although my Dad was the first to say that what he went though was chump change compared to what, say, a 18 year-old Marine on Guadalcanal had to go through. At least pilots got to sleep in actual bed every night.

My uncle was a naval aviator and he was a lot more comfortable with the whole thing. Both of them, (dad and uncle) were a different breed though. Those tough old guys are few and far between these days.

[busdriver1959]

Obviously I can't type or proofread. I meant Gabreski's son.

[Jaq]

You dad sounds just like my father-in-law. He was a paratrooper, fought at the Bulge amongst other places, but never liked to speak about it. But so many of them were that way; just humble, decent men and women who endured all that so that their children wouldn't have to. As one man said, "I was a soldier, so that my son could be a poet."

One of the things I'm especially grateful for is that my daughter - who's just 14 - has (had, now) a grandad who was alive back then. It's always stunning to me how connected we all are to events that seem so distant. When one of my grandmothers was 15, her great-great-grandmother was 95, sharp as a tack, and had plenty of tales to tell. My grandmother eventually passed them on to my siblings and I, and to this day I can still feel the presence of a woman born almost 200 years ago. Bus flying with Gabreski's son is just like that; there's an immediacy, a connectedness, to the past that's just profound.

Anyway, to talk of jackets... I don't have an issue with wearing them, though I respect Saab's reasoning completely. For me, I bought them when I was doing some open-cockpit flying - and I used that E6B pocket exactly for that. That said, I have a couple friends who do "re-enacting," and they're always trying to get me to go along with them. I just can't bring myself to do it; like Saab said, there's something so (to me) wrong about it. That said, though, the guys are incredible historians and preservationists. Once, years ago, I found a drum-magazine pouch for a Thompson sub-machine-gun in a surplus store and bought it, intending to use it as an occasional shell pouch for bird hunting. One of the guys stole it, personally made me an exact replica, and gave the pouch to a museum he's associated with. And he bought me a bottle of whiskey. Fair trade, I thought.

[Jaq]

Nice vids, by the way. One of my faves is "Thunderbolt." Found it on Youtube. Go figure.

[Proparc]

[QUOTE=chancerider;442015]Civilian versions tend to be blousy. Real, period A2's are slim and a little on the skimpy side.

At 6' 1" tall and 160 lbs. my old man was able to fly only because he flew the P-47 Thunderbolt...an unusually roomy cockpit.

A WWII Jug Driver. Now that is seriously, seriously cool. I wonder if he took out any German troop transport trains.

[Jonathan]

You're killing me. No .45, sheesh. I'm out of town but will post pics when I get back.

The tag is a little worn, I'm still curious as to the approx age. It's had new cuffs and the zipper(I think) sewn in back in the late 80's when I was in high school.

[RickM]

[QUOTE=Proparc;470184]

Civilian versions tend to be blousy. Real, period A2's are slim and a little on the skimpy side.

At 6' 1" tall and 160 lbs. my old man was able to fly only because he flew the P-47 Thunderbolt...an unusually roomy cockpit.

A WWII Jug Driver. Now that is seriously, seriously cool. I wonder if he took out any German troop transport trains.

He did. He did not enjoy it one bit. He also helped shoot down 2 planes; JU88 and a ME410. He also strafed troops in trenches. Basically the whole horrorshow. I know what you're saying...but he didn't think it was cool at all..but Thanks for the comments.

[RickM]

The tag is a little worn, I'm still curious as to the approx age. It's had new cuffs and the zipper(I think) sewn in back in the late 80's when I was in high school.

Okay Jonathan; some quick input-->> Yes, the cuffs and zipper are definite replacements. The "USN" punched thru the windflap and the rounded, (not scalloped) pocket flaps show this to be a trueG-1...not the earlier WWII variants like the M-422 and the M-422-A...which are always generically referred to as G-1's but aren't, really. Yours also has a nice real mouton collar that has faded nicely to the lovely honey color. Originally, the mouton was died dark brown.
The purple-ish liner looks to be the original liner, and the goatskin leather looks nice. It's pre-Vietnam era for sure, and my guess is early 1960's. The lable is unreadable to me, but I am going to pass that photo along to some jacket collectors who are essentially the equivalent of your typical Classic Rendezvous Masi geek, (I say that in a purely complimentary manner!) who may be able to decode something from the lable given the few contract numbers that can actually be read. I'll PM you with anything I find out.

Best,

Rick

[Bruce Day]

Chancerider, when I was a young pilot, Pappy Gabreski was retired but revered by the USAF. He came and visited our squadron in Thailand....we were flying bombing missions to the Ho Chi Minh trail. At the O'Club with Pappy, several visiting generals and the squadron of young guys , all drinking, hooting and hanging on every word. What an experience. I was fortunate that when I started, many of our senior officers were WWII and Korean experienced. Within a few years, they were all gone.

[RickM]

The tag is a little worn, I'm still curious as to the approx age. It's had new cuffs and the zipper(I think) sewn in back in the late 80's when I was in high school.

Okay, feedback I get from a pretty knowledgeable guy is;

"I think it says L.W. Foster Sportswear - MIL-J-7823 (AER). The 7823(AER) jackets are the first revision of the G-1 series that started with the spec 55J14 in 1947. The 7823 jacket run began in 1951 or 1952 and ran through 1960. In 1961 the 7823A series was introduced.
There were numerous 7823 contracts with LW Foster having several over the decade. The Foster jackets are among the most common of the 7823(AER) series and are very well made and proportioned. As compared to other 7823 contract holders the LW Foster jackets are known for having full shoulders and relatively wide upper arms and arm holes.
Impossible to tell the specific contract and year of manufacture as those numbers cannot be read."

When new, the jacket would have looked like this;

[Jonathan]

Cool, thanks. As to sizing, it may say 42 but it fits like a 39 or 40 today. We Americans have grown. I bought the jacket from my cousin in the 80's. My cousin rescued it from an hvac guy in the Carolina Piedmont who was using it to crawl under mobile homes during installation. I purchased it after a restoration of the leather, cuts and zipper. My brother had it for a few years when I outgrew it. It fits again, barely. Thanks again for the info.