A2 fit

[B-Man2]

Wartime production …. Put ‘em together and get ‘em out to the troops. Quality control was relaxed. The collars were probably made by several different sewers and thrown into a bin and then sewn on by another machine operator.

 

[Pa12]

Yeah, I could see that.

 

[leper-colony]

The glued down rank with clipped corners is pretty neat.

 

[Pa12]

I’m sure it never occurred to anyone that they were building icons we drool over 80 years later.

 

[B-Man2]

The glued down rank with clipped corners is pretty neat.

Probably hand made and applied by the man himself .

 

[usafchappyt]

Must have sucked to be that tall in the 40’sView attachment 76758

Those popped collars have quite a bit of attitude!

 

[Chandler]

Those popped collars have quite a bit of attitude!

Whenever I see those pictures of the Raiders crews, I always look at the faces and just can't imagine what these guys are about to undertake... and just how pulled together they look.

 

[usafchappyt]

Whenever I see those pictures of the Raiders crews, I always look at the faces and just can't imagine what these guys are about to undertake... and just how pulled together they look.

I'm reading "Masters of the Air" and I love it, but I also hate it, because it wrecks every shred of romance over bomber boys flying around in sweet leather jackets. The details of what they went through are heart-wrenching: the level of trauma from watching friends getting blown up and shot out of the sky, before June 1944 a 75% chance of getting killed, injured or captured. And of course, they had no idea how to deal with such things in the 1940s. Men who succumbed to PTSD and moral injury could be given a dishonorable discharge for lacking "moral fiber" and patriotism. And most of them were teens and early twenties.

 

[Pa12]

Yes. If you speak to anyone who was there, there’s no romantic illusions. Just hell.

 

[Pa12]

My father burned everything he had from 4 years with RCAF bomber command and would never talk about his experience. We had another guy in our home town who flew lancs. After the war he became a psychiatrist of all things. After 25 years he went off the deep end and became a homeless person on the streets of Toronto. Everyone assumed it all caught up with him.

 

[mulceber]

Yeah, that was one of the things I thought Masters of the Air did really well. It just dived into the trauma of going through the air war. As it happens, I read Catch-22 shortly before MotA, and I was just shocked after I'd read both how little Catch-22 was exaggerating (although it was in a different theater). I had a smidge of sympathy for the people like Hap Arnold who were trying to create a whole new theory of warfare out of nothing, but that theory fell apart pretty much as soon as it made contact with reality, and my heart went out to those bomber crews who were stuck trying to muddle through anyway.

 

[Chandler]

Yes. If you speak to anyone who was there, there’s no romantic illusions. Just hell.

Well, I've read a lot of accounts where there were those illusions... then reality reared its head.

Definitely why I respect anyone who steps into the breach.

 

[Pa12]

One of the few stories he told me , and not until he was 80, was witnessing a fully loaded lanc explode on takeoff from a flat tire. He was in the base library and all the windows were blown out. He said tracers were going off for at least 20 minutes afterwards.

 

[Pa12]

As if being in a frozen airplane at night for 6 plus hours wasn’t brutal enough. Then you have accidents, incidents and thousands of people trying to kill you. Amazes me they weren’t all bat shit crazy. He did say they all drank……a lot!

 

[mulceber]

Amazes me they weren’t all bat shit crazy.

Well if the noted expert on the topic, John Yossarian, is to be believed, they were.

 

[MauldinFan]

In the 40s, sleeves weren't normally as long as we get today. Just a bit above you wrist wasn't uncommon in uniforms or civilian duds. Beats me if that was considered the style or just lazy, but it was common.
Now, in these cases of these A2s, that's clearly just bad availability for sleeve lengths

 

[Pa12]

Same with pants. All the old movies they’re wearing what we used to call flood pants when we were kids. “The rain has stopped, the ground is dry, so why do you wear your pants so high”. . Haven’t said that in 50 years. Heavens knows how I remembered it.

 

[Chandler]

C'mon guys, we're talking about changes in styles and clothing production over 80+ years, some good -- some not so good.

When I first started getting fitted for suits in the late '70s, the tailor fit the pants to just break on the top of my shoes and the waist fit just over my hip bones.

The baggy length and hip-hugger look still doesn't strike me as stylish -- then again, I'm one on those in-between guys who doesn't take the usual off-the-shelf sizes, so I'm probably a little jaded.

 

[Pa12]

I agree. And it’s a lot easier these days with lots of choices. I remember when you couldn’t find pants that weren’t flairs or bell bottoms and I hated them. Nowadays you can find virtually anything.

 

[Chandler]

I agree. And it’s a lot easier these days with lots of choices. I remember when you couldn’t find pants that weren’t flairs or bell bottoms and I hated them. Nowadays you can find virtually anything.

Boot cut jeans.