London Cabbie
Well-Known Member
Welcome Joe. Amazing that you can share your fathers work here. I have an L-2jacket in nylon, why did NASA choose fabric for the Astronaut’s L type...?
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ORIGINAL FLITE WEAR JACKET FROM APOLLO ERA
- Thread starter Jorgeenriqueaguilera
- Start date
London Cabbie
Well-Known Member
That makes perfect sense. Thanks
ButteMT61
Well-Known Member
@Joe Land - Spectacular find this morning to see this! Absolutely a great story, and it fits in well with this place - we're not just leather peoples...
This makes owning one of Max's jackets ever more special - knowing the history and personal story.
Seems like days like this are gone, but I dare say that with the new economy, at least we can have a smaller-scale version that continues in your dad's quest to make great flight jackets - if only for desktop pilots like most of us are!
Big welcome to the forum!!!
This makes owning one of Max's jackets ever more special - knowing the history and personal story.
Seems like days like this are gone, but I dare say that with the new economy, at least we can have a smaller-scale version that continues in your dad's quest to make great flight jackets - if only for desktop pilots like most of us are!
Big welcome to the forum!!!
It might interest you all that the orange lining in the flight jackets was my father's idea. Flight jackets in the early 50's and before were mostly lined in sage green or other OD but not the orange. Dad maintained his whole life that the orange lining was his idea first. He convinced the government buyers that a downed pilot would be easier to see if he could reverse his jacked and show the orange. The impetus for the change was a winter flying jacket with a spec for a white lining. He told them that made no sense at all. My sister tells the story that one day after school dad pinned a square of orange cloth on my brother David's back and and had him ride his bicycle down the block while he had my sister keep an eye on Dave to see how far he could go before they couldn't see the orange anymore. David got two blocks on his bicycle before he was out of sight. I'm guessing that was sometime between 1956-58. The orange lining took off big time and became an industry standard. Later in life, dad bought a ranch an he had all grain bins and a barn painted orange. He told me orange was his favorite color . . . "Orange has been good to me." For all the K2-B's and flight jackets he made . . . it was.
B-Man2
Well-Known Member
Joe
Another great back story that has answered a lot of questions here. Over the years there have been several discussions as to when the orange lined MA-1 reversible jackets were developed , when they were issued but more importantly, why the Air Force stopped issuing them. (We think we know the answer to that last question ) . I hope that your dad got compensated fairly for all of his innovative ideas and his work.
Thanks for another great story.
Another great back story that has answered a lot of questions here. Over the years there have been several discussions as to when the orange lined MA-1 reversible jackets were developed , when they were issued but more importantly, why the Air Force stopped issuing them. (We think we know the answer to that last question ) . I hope that your dad got compensated fairly for all of his innovative ideas and his work.
Thanks for another great story.
Here's a photo of my dad, E.H. Land, around the time he was working for both Henry Levitt as a tailor and running the production line for Henry's friends, Louie and Freddie Fruhauf at their band uniform company in Wichita. The Fruhaufs briefly manufactured flight jackets but dropped that to stick with their core business, the band uniforms. Dad told me one night on his way out the door at Fruhauf's he saw a brown envelop in the trash marked Dept of Defense. He shoved it in his coat and took it home. In it was an invitation to bid on contract for three thousand K2B flying suits. He filled in the paperwork and signed it, E.H.Land, President, Land Manufacturing Company . . . with our home address . . . and he won the bid. From then on my mother was instructed to always answer the phone, "Land Manufacturing . . . how may I direct your call." By the way, that suit coat dad is tailoring . . . those are hand worked, working button holes on the sleeve. He used to call them Doctor's sleeves. Dad learned the tailoring trade from German tailors who survived the holocaust because of their expert tailoring skills and the vanity of the German officers.
ButteMT61
Well-Known Member
That's some amazing work! Hard to believe we used to do things like this and take the time to do it right. Everything is so rushed now and automated that it's no wonder clothing (and everything else) is just seen as disposable.
THIS is why I buy from small biz and get the quality/care that comes from a job well done. Yep, the two year wait on a GW seems like a good deal to me.
THIS is why I buy from small biz and get the quality/care that comes from a job well done. Yep, the two year wait on a GW seems like a good deal to me.
London Cabbie
Well-Known Member
Smart gentleman, in more ways than one.
YoungMedic
Well-Known Member
This information is so enjoyable and what makes this place so great. Joe, I'm glad you found your way here, your contributions will be invaluable to the community of enthusiasts here who absolutely are more appreciative than you can imagine. Cheers and thanks for sharing
I sure watched his handwork for endless hours really my whole life but he never taught me in that sense. He used to lament that high end tailoring would die out because it didn’t pay enough. But I can sew on a coat button with a shank like Ive seen him do a hundred times and hem a pair of slacks by hand with a blind stitch and not a single stitch will show. Seems like he fit a couple of suits for me the last year he was around. He would have been 88.
I still have the only capital my dad had when he started Land Manufacturing in our basement. The tools of a tailor. The tape measure is new but ev
erything else is older than I am. And I can guarantee you a whole lot of flying suits and jackets were cut out with those shears.
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Now that I think of it, I know dad did all the cutting by hand at night for the early flight suit contracts so he probably cut out thousands of orange or sage green K2B's with those shears. He built a 16' cutting table out of 2x4's and plywood and covered it with masonite. I can remember playing on the floor of the basement and hearing those big shears rumble and snap on that table. Thats a sound I'll never forget. To do garments production style, there was a stand at one end of the table holding a roll of the cloth. Dad would pull the cloth the length of the table, smooth it with that wood yard stick, and cut it from the roll. That process repeated to do a layup and the patterns would then be traced with chalk (some of his old hunks of chalk laying there). For hand cutting the layup was likely only four or so. By the time the NASA contracts happened Land Mfg was in a small brick building rented from the same lady who owned the house we lived in from. My father built a cutting table in the back of the shop with a cutting table probably 4 sheets of plywood long or at least 30'. By then he had trained two cutters and they were doing layups of 50 or 60 layers and using Eastman Electric knives. That was for the large scale production. But the NASA contracts were for small quantities. It's pretty likely those were cut out by hand with the tools you see here. And if dad made a suit for a test pilot to exact measurements he would have cut it out himself.
B-Man2
Well-Known Member
Joe
This is great stuff. I’m sure others will agree that your dad had talents and skills that have fallen by the wayside in today’s automated world. When I was a kid, I grew up in the Italian section of South Philadelphia and there were families of skilled tailors , who skills were past on from generation to generation within a mile of each other. They would make custom made Italian silk suits for those who were able to afford their services . Of course In my area these were basically mob guys who wore suits everyday and you could see them pull up to the tailors in their Coup DeVilles and Eldorado's . Such a shame that we’ve lost people like your dad who had theses talents, their trade craft passes with them . Thank you once again for sharing your stories with us.
This is great stuff. I’m sure others will agree that your dad had talents and skills that have fallen by the wayside in today’s automated world. When I was a kid, I grew up in the Italian section of South Philadelphia and there were families of skilled tailors , who skills were past on from generation to generation within a mile of each other. They would make custom made Italian silk suits for those who were able to afford their services . Of course In my area these were basically mob guys who wore suits everyday and you could see them pull up to the tailors in their Coup DeVilles and Eldorado's . Such a shame that we’ve lost people like your dad who had theses talents, their trade craft passes with them . Thank you once again for sharing your stories with us.
