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Named and painted M43 jacket


Ray42
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Today I picked up an amazing M43 jacket that was patched to a member of the Air Transport Command under the 14th Air Force. The really awesome part of this jacket is the artwork painted on the back, the vet painted a map of West Virginia and labeled it with the name of a town, Mannington. It also appears that the vet painted a blue mountain along the boarder with Virginia, probably to represent the Blue Ridge Mountains. Crazily Mannington is only around 30 minutes from where I grew up.  The jacket is also named to M K Burgess and includes the vet's serial number, but oddly enough when I type the number into the ww2-enlistment site no one pops up so maybe his information was destroyed in the fire. Regardless I have been looking for a uniform from a West Virginia WW2 vet, and this fits the bill. Hopefully I can find more information about the Vet and their role during the war.

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huntssurplus

Awesome! I have a somewhat similar M43 Field Jacket that was painted on the back by a member of the Far East Air Force. He was a mechanic, and from the cuff patch on the right sleeve I bet your guy was too. Seems like the mechanics were jealous of the painted leather jackets of the pilots and aircrew so painted their own as well!

Nice find again!

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I think you are right that he was a mechanic of some kind, one of his pockets is completely coated in oil on the inside as if he repeatedly put dirty parts in it. I am curious as to whether he could have been a flight engineer or not, but if not he certainly went all out to make his jacket look similar to the flight jackets of air crews. By some coincidence the jacket was even made by the Aero Leather Clothing company which made a lot of the leather jackets in ww2.

 

On a side note feel free to post your painted jacket if you want, I would love to see it. 

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huntssurplus

Yeah I do wonder why these painted M43’s do all end up belonging to mechanics. They probably just had the time, the materials, and the job where they could actually paint them opposed to other jobs where they couldn’t either because of being in a combat situation or a stricter garrison one.

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Here is mine, it’s faded but you can see the FEAF patch in the center with with two scantily-clad women posing on either side. I really wish I could have seen it when it was first painted!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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10 hours ago, huntssurplus said:



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Wow, that is a nice example. I think it is actually the second Far East Command painted M43 I have seen, but the artwork on yours is larger, too bad it has faded. 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

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8 hours ago, aznation said:

As always thanks aznation, I appreciate your help. I had found his draft card on Ancestry and noted him as a possible candidate and am glad that you seem to agree with me. As I eliminate the few other possibilities I found I think he is becoming the likely candidate, however I had some issues with IDing the piece to him. The first issue I had was that he did not enlist until 1946, and the ATC was largely stripped of men and resources after the war. I found that in 1942 they had about 210,000 men and by august 1945 they had only around 3,000 men. That suggests that statistically this patch combination would be more likely to be encountered during the war, but not impossible since the ATC was around until 1948.  The second issue I had was I think I found a document with his Air Force serial number and it did not match, granted if he was given a different serial number when he switched branches that is an easy explanation but I do not know if that happened.  

 

I guess that I will need to try and find information on what role the ATC and 14th Airforce played immediately post war.

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I Hate Moths

Ray

That's a great local connection to our area. I am just north of you in South West Pa.

Here is a painted M43 jacket that i have. It is also from a mechanic.

I posted it on the forum a few month ago.

https://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/index.php?/topic/350759-painted-m43-field-jacket-for-the-24th-combat-mapping-squadron/&tab=comments#comment-2800681

Tom

 

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Wow, That is a great jacket and I love the artwork on yours. I wish the artwork on mine was as clear as that. 

 

I agree that the jacket I found is a great piece of local history for the area, the ironic thing is that I actually found it in Indianapolis.  It is lucky that I found it because unless someone knew the area they might not have realized that "Mannin" meant Mannington, it is a rather small town and due to the unfortunate abbreviation if you google "Mannin West Virginia" it gives you results for "Man in West Virginia". 

 

I also think that it is funny that mechanics decorating their uniforms to look like flight jackets seems to have occurred with some regularity. I guess they got jealous and couldn't let the pilots have all the fun.

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huntssurplus

Tom-

 

Great jacket! I would love to see more pictures of painted M43 Jackets, wonder if anyone has one that wasn't worn by a mechanic? 

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I agree, it would be great to see a few others posted, I have a few that I have found online and saved pictures that I will add to this thread later. Interestingly I was watching a documentary, I think on Netflix and in one clip of film I spotted a soldier that had an M43 on that was painted with the outline of something on the back. I think it was similar to mine where the art wasn't filled in which made it hard to tell what it was, but the soldier was in the Normandy area if I remember. I will have to go back and take a picture of that because it was pretty cool to see a period image of one. 

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