When someone makes a discover they present their case which you have done.   At the end of their writing they will offer footnotes so their colleagues can test the findings and understand where their conclusions come from.   Instead of thinking we are all off base offer us the library where your information comes from.    

Rooter, A very nice display of VN era flight gear, not an area I collect, however well done.  I do have a question regarding the gloves.  The back story is I once had a mess dress uniform on mannequin displayed in public with all the accouterments, gloves included.  A couple came up and asked if the gloves were "correct"?  I said yes they came with the uniform from the veteran and were dated about the same as the other parts.  The couple got rather indignant and said the gloves were all wrong and stormed off!  I was stunned and absolutely perplexed as to what their outburst was all about.  So back to my question for you, how do you handle the small items for such a display?  Are the gloves dated concurrent to the major items or is any pair representative close enough?  Do you feel it is more important to have a "placeholder" that may not be perfect, than an empty space or missing item?  Have you had any similar dissatisfied patrons who took umbrage with a display or artifact?  Cheers, Armygas

darn, I like the .pdf.  Thank you much.

Thank all of you for your immense help in researching this. I'll see if I can get in contact with the family and hopefully get some more information to confirm 100% if this jumper belonged to him. This is one of the reasons I love the hobby, you learn something new every day. I cannot thank y'all enough. 

Just things I have found at fleamarkets. Those pieces that have the rust look. The one piece is 1 1/2" thick. Thanks.

As a supplement to the information provided, there are over 5700 entries shown on Navy Muster Rolls as well as over 1500 USMC Muster Roll entries for "Birch" on ancestry.com.   Without additional data it will be difficult to determine the owner of this jumper.   Larry

One was a tank Destroyer unit I had two German made DIs and two armor patches with hand written numbers in ink.   The other one I pitched before I knew what it was.   I had never seen one before and I didn’t think anyone would take it serious.   It was someone on the forum who hasn’t posted in a while who told me that my hand written tank destroyer wasn’t a joke.   I questioned the vet about it and he admitted to doing it during and right after the war.   Something tells me I posted it on the forum somewhere.

I bought a collection that smelled like mildew and musk I simply hung everything out on the wash line for about a week and then brought it in and the smell went away, be careful not to use chemicals. I also had a German helmet that was in a fire and the liner smelled of smoke, I put the liner in a ziplock bag with mothballs and about a year later the smell was gone. It takes time to get rid of smells but it can be done

This is a little bit outside of the scope of this thread, but the lighter was too cool not to post:     This lighter celebrates the space flight of Vietnam and Soviet Union astronauts. 1980 Soyuz 37 mission. “Lien Xo” translates as “Soviet Union” on the helmet of the astronaut on the right.