Jump to content

USN Painted Flight Jacket


Scarecrow
 Share

Recommended Posts

Haven't posted for a while so thought I'd have back at it with a few pictures of my favorite painted flight jacket. This is a private purchase A-2 type leather jacket. It obviously belonged to a USN pilot that flew off the carrier USS Hornet. Unfortunately the name associated with the jacket is just "Bud" and that is a common nickname for a whole lot of proper names. Foe example I have a good friend of mine who's name is Charles but goes by the nickname Bud. On the roster of Hornet pilots there is one who's name is Bud Whited but I have no way of associating this jacket to him. As you can imagine Naval painted jackets are quite scarce. I'll let the photos speak for themselves. I can just just wonder if this jacket was there when the Doolittle Raiders flew off the deck of the Hornet? Hope you enjoy the photos and thanks for looking.

post-23999-0-70191900-1406598703.jpgpost-23999-0-71027200-1406598714.jpgpost-23999-0-94910800-1406598725.jpgpost-23999-0-39201300-1406598737.jpgpost-23999-0-75900900-1406598758.jpgpost-23999-0-87011900-1406598767.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Johnny Signor

Man o Man that is a Sweeeeeeeet jacket right there for sure !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Awesome art work !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

manayunkman

Four kills should help narrow it down.

 

Buying it privately didn't come with any information ?

 

Regardless it's quite a stunner.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting jacket. I know the Navy usually frowned upon pilots painting their jackets. Did this come from the family or somewhere else?

 

JD

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is there a manufacturers label in the neck of the jacket? I have seen a number of private purchase A-2s, but I have never seen this pattern before with the elongated skinny front pockets. Who made the zipper?

 

Kurt

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Unfortunately no family history with the jacket. Believe it or not I acquired it from a buddy of mine that found it at a Thrift store about 30 years ago. That was when you could still find good items at Thrift stores. There is no label as the jacket has been stripped of its lining. The zipper pull is a skinny small sized square ended "AERO". With the WWII art work especially the KO'd Japanese aircraft, I would tend to doubt that this is from the 50's.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I will be honest. It looks like a post war era produced jacket to me as well. 30 years ago is only the mid 80's. There were lots of vintage 50's-60's jackets being painted up back then. I tried doing some research on the production era of the Aero brand, but came up empty for now.

 

JD

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Looks like Aero Zippers have been around for a long time. This is from a vintage clothing site:

 

http://forums.vintagefashionguild.org/threads/when-did-aero-zip-appear.42790/

 

"Aero Zipp (sic) was established in the UK in the 1930s by my grandmother's second husband Joachim Koppel, a refugee from Nazi Germany. It went on to secure 40% of the UK zip market. The company went public in the late 60s and was later taken over by an American multinational, and closed down probably due to overwhelming competition from the Far East. The trade mark and name were later purchased and are currently in use by a new company with no connections to the original family. "

 

 

I have not seen WWII manufactured jackets with an Aero zipper before though. With the war on I doubt they would have imported them from the UK to the USA.

 

I do know a guy who was a well known jacket painter back in the 1960's and he told me his painted A-2s regularly show up on Ebay as real because he did a good job, and the paint has had almost 50 years to age now. He painted them for veterans and he frequented reunions back in the 60's and 70's. The problem is when a vet dies and had one of this guys jackets, everyone assumes its a 1940's period paint job because the vet wore the jacket for years and has age.

 

Kurt

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...