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WWII USN flight jacket with artwork / painted patches - help to ID


Pluto
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M442 or M442A USN flight jacket, original untouched condition. Spec label missing. I have not been able to ID any of the insignia painted to this jacket. Appears to possibly be a torpedo / fighter squadron. Note that the pocket panels have also been painted, the pocket flaps were tucked inside the pocket bags and worn that way. Grateful for any assistance to ID any of the insignia here.

Thanks,

P.

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pockets - one with yellow falling bomb with face, holding a dagger and a pistol, against clear blue skies (fighter bomber squadron ?) ... other pocket with a typhoon, tornado, cyclone .. over cornfields .. ??

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chest insignia - white triangle with black edge, in centre a falling bomb with swallow-type wings .. the other very worn circular with black edge, yellow falling bomb ..

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rear - appears to be a torpedo, dropped vertically - over waves, yellow element ??, and silver paint for sky..

 

Any help to ID any of this insignia much appreciated, unsure if WWII or Korea ..

 

thanks !

 

P

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  • 2 weeks later...
Johnny Signor

rear - appears to be a torpedo, dropped vertically - over waves, yellow element ??, and silver paint for sky..

 

Any help to ID any of this insignia much appreciated, unsure if WWII or Korea ..

 

thanks !

 

P

I think you actually may have a cross over jacket, as I believe the emblems to be all USAAF types, this one is very similar to the 424th Bombardment Squadron

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Johnny Signor

pockets - one with yellow falling bomb with face, holding a dagger and a pistol, against clear blue skies (fighter bomber squadron ?) ... other pocket with a typhoon, tornado, cyclone .. over cornfields .. ??

This one similar to the 434th Bombardment Squadron (reversed)

post-2068-0-41972800-1521530584.jpg

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Johnny Signor

pockets - one with yellow falling bomb with face, holding a dagger and a pistol, against clear blue skies (fighter bomber squadron ?) ... other pocket with a typhoon, tornado, cyclone .. over cornfields .. ??

And this one above bottom image similar to the 22nd Anti-Submarine Squadron .....

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Johnny Signor

chest insignia - white triangle with black edge, in centre a falling bomb with swallow-type wings .. the other very worn circular with black edge, yellow falling bomb ..

This one reminds me of this unit ,I don't have unit ID but similar also .....early AAF

post-2068-0-08651800-1521530942.jpg

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I get the impression when looking at the patches that this was worn by someone in the AAF too.

 

Kurt

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pararaftanr2

I hate to be a "nay-sayer", but I have a different take on this jacket, unless you have some provenance for it you haven't yet mentioned. Five painted USAAF squadron insignia don't make much sense on a Navy jacket. The lining looks red to me in the photos, so I am guessing this is a Navy contract M-422a, not a later AN-6552, which would have a brown lining. Also, the painting of the insignia on the pockets, after removing the buttons and tucking in the flaps, is very odd. If it had been worn that way, those two insignia would show some wear from the lap belt, yet they are more "fresh" than the others. My take? Somebody was practicing both their artistic skills and their weathering abilities, using this jacket as their "canvas". Back in the period of the 1980s-1990s, there was a virtual cottage industry of people who would add painted insignia of all manor to flight jackets, spurred on by movies such as "The Right Stuff" and "Top Gun". At militaria shows then, it was quite common to see all sorts of impossible combinations of jacket and "artwork" being passed off as authentic and vintage-done. Just my take.

Regards, Paul

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Johnny Signor

Well, I was just putting in my 2 cents worth as to the 'emblems" not the jacket type, they could have been done "post" WW2 , but look to be of AAF unit types regardless of when they were done or the type jacket they're on ..........

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IMHO - Lacking any real provenance, it's going to be next to impossible establishing a serious pedigree on this piece.

Johnny has a point regarding those had painted unit emblems, they all bear a very similar resemblance to the USAAF

insignia he mentioned.

 

The issue as to whether this jacket was originally intended for the Army Air Forces, the US Navy or the Luftwaffe is pretty

much immaterial in the final analysis. Case in point: Many semesters ago I owned an original RAF Bomber Jacket that I

believe the Brits referred to as an 'Irvin' Jacket). Anyway, it bore the group insignia of the AAF/453dBombSqdn (323dBombGp)

hand painted on a leather disk and sewn on the left upper side of the jacket along with a leather piece directly above displaying

the individuals name. There was also an embroidered Ninth AF SSI sewn onto the upper left shoulder.

 

The point here is that just because an article of clothing was originally manufactured for one branch of service doesn't forgo

the possibility of that one or more of those items might eventually end up 'serving' in another service branch.

 

There are, unfortunately, almost infinite possibilities connected with an undocumented piece like this.

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thanks for the feedback on this jacket, very helpful. I'd not looked into USAAF squadrons, only USMC/USN due to the type of jacket. Did not occur to me. Glad to see that I am not the only one that finds this to be a mystery. The jacket has no provenance or history, but I consider the source to be reliable. I don't believe that anyone has touched this jacket since the '40s or '50s. Whatever it is, I believe it to be honest. The wear is consistent and not artificial. Whether this was painted up wartime or immediate postwar by a veteran to wear to the bar/club etc, I don't know - but the art is old and the wear is legitimate. To me it looks more like a party-type jacket rather than a bona-fide flight-worn combat jacket. My experience of '80s faked jackets is they tend to have a lot of Vargas girls, exploding German tanks or Japanese flags, gung-ho aircraft names, and are badged to famous squadrons. This jacket does not profess that sort of glamour. What we have here is I agree a really random selection of lesser-known units, one of which served purely stateside and two of which appear to have both been raised in Washington state at the start of the war so at least there might be a link there. Also, we don't know who the owner was or what he did. The jacket has never had a name-plate attached like most USN jackets. He may have been attached / in USAAF, but may not have been an aviator - could have been a press attache or meteorologist for all this jacket tells us. For me, the best thing about collecting, and I have done for 35+ years, are the mysteries, oddities and unknown bits that surface, and that maybe if you are lucky there may be answers for them, but at least they provoke thought ..

thanks for all the comments,

Cheers,

Pluto

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