Lord Flashheart
Well-Known Member
PREFACE
In December 2021 Jan, Wei and I posted a thread entitled “A Better Fighting Garment…” - A Beginner’s Guide to the US Navy’s WWII-era and later Intermediate Flight Jackets. We wanted to fill a gap in the knowledge base on the forum and the thread was written as a “Beginners Guide”. We were very grateful for the help of a number of Forum members and others in developing the content.
Since our Guide was posted the thread has inspired discussion on all manner of points associated with these jackets. We have recognised that there was more to say, some corrections to make and some references to provide to help others explore this considerable series. This thread is therefore a Revised Guide and we hope it will be even more illuminating than its predecessor.
We have made the decision to retain that original thread, unaltered, as a Discussion thread. We believe that this preserves the transparency of the information as it emerged. We encourage the use of that thread, rather than this resource, as the place for discussion so that this sticky can remain focused and readily searchable.
On a personal level Wei and I would like to give Jan special credit for his diligence and hard work in detailed research and helping to drive these revisions. His energy has kept up our momentum to improve this Guide for the benefit of everyone here.
INTRODUCTION
Various threads on VLJ which have listed the US Navy contracts from the M-422 to G-1 series of leather flying jackets. This version 2.0 of our original thread updates the information we now have to sit alongside the A-2 contract dates thread as a resource on the Forum. The original thread and our acknowledgements have been retained and left open as a discussion thread for members interested in Navy jackets and we hope that it can be both a resource in its own right and space where issues and nuances of this long series of jackets can be debated.
In compiling this guide we have sought advice and opinion from Dave Sheeley and John Chapman at various points of uncertainty or ambiguity. They have, without fail, kindly helped us to understand so what there is to know about the design and evolution of the Navy’s intermediate leather flight jacket. John’s US Flight Jacket CD was also an invaluable source of information, particularly for features distinguishing individual contracts.
Finally, in documenting these contracts, we have been greatly indebted to Aota Mituhiro’s Full Gear (abbreviated when citing sources as FG) and the Civilian Production Administration’s Alphabetic Listing of Major War Supply Contracts (abbreviated when citing sources as WSC).
We’d like to thank all of our fellow Forum members who have helped us by sharing their knowledge and for making our original thread as interesting a discussion as it has become. We hope that continues.
If you have more information please do share that in the original – now Discussion – thread first so that this thread can remain a focused sticky. Thanks !
AN OVERVIEW
Discussion of jacket types in this hobby, among Navy jackets and beyond, frequently boils down to a discussion of hard and fast differences between jacket types: B-15 vs. B-15A, L-2A vs. L2B, etc. This impulse is understandable, but it actually doesn’t get us very far when discussing Navy jackets, especially the early ones.
The reality is, prior to about 1960, manufacturers who won a contract to make an intermediate flight jacket for the Navy were provided with a sketch and a list of specifications that the jacket had to meet. As was the case with the manufacturers of the Air Force’s A-2 jackets, Navy contractors were afforded latitude to make the garments as they saw fit. But whereas on the army side, the practice frequently was to change jacket specifications only when they needed to make a real structural change to the jackets (nobody would ever mistake an A-2 for a B-10), changes to Navy jacket specifications are not necessarily reflected in the appearance of the jackets. Sometimes there were real changes in materials or design, but just as frequently, a change in specification reflected a change as small as an update to the contract language (Chapman, 3 Dec. ‘21). There are many cases like the Willis & Geiger M-422A, which has much less in common with other jackets in that series than it does with W&G’s previous M-422 contract.
In short, when you’re looking at Navy Flight Jackets, it pays to look less for differences between jacket specifications and more for differences between contracts & manufacturers.
STRUCTURE
The evolution of the US Navy’s (USN) primary intermediate flight jacket can be traced through 12 iterations or “specifications.” This guide is structured into 12 specifications split over 3 parts: WW2, the 50s, and the Vietnam era. The specifications in chronological sequence of posts are:
- [2] M-422 [1940]
- [9] M-422A [1940 - 1943]
- [21] AN-J-3 [1943]
- [26] AN-J-3A [1943-1947]
- [41] 55J14 (AER) [1947 - 1952]
- [48] MIL-J-7823 (AER) [1952 - 1960]
- [61] MIL-J-7823A (AER) [1961]
- [65] MIL-J-7823B (WEP) [1961 -1963]
- [74] MIL-J-7823C (WEP) [1964 - 1966]
- [81] MIL-J-7823D (WP) [1967 - 1970]
- [91] MIL-J-7823E (AS) [1971 - Present]
- [97] Navy jackets in the movies - “Top Gun” [1986]
- [98] A Few Concluding Thoughts
- [99] Private purchase, PX or civilian market G-1 jackets
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