Lord Flashheart
Well-Known Member
Part 2 - After the Second World War - Post WW2, the Korean War, and the 1950s.
6. G-1 (55J14) [1947 - 1950]
Many write-ups on the 55J14 (e.g. Eastman’s) can inadvertently leave readers confused about the relationship of the first G-1 to earlier flight jackets. Since the last Navy jacket prior to the 55J14 that most repro makers offer is the M-422A, novices can be forgiven for supposing that the Navy had just not been producing jackets for several years prior to the introduction of the G-1. In fact, if you look at the contract data from the previous section, the last of the AN-J-3A contracts was issued in the same fiscal year as the first of the G-1 jackets. What’s missing here is some context.
In July the same year that the first G-1 contracts went out, U.S. President Harry Truman signed into law the National Security Act of 1947, which established the Air Force as an independent branch of the United States military. While most people in our hobby are familiar with that date, the changes had far more wide-reaching impacts than just what roundel appeared on Air Force jackets. This Act of Congress established the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Council (Britannica: National Security Act). More importantly, for our purposes, it also consolidated the Departments of War and the Navy into a new Department of Defense. A key priority here was to streamline the administration of the U.S. Military and “eliminate the duplication of effort in the DoD” (Britannica: National Security Act).
In this light, it’s really not surprising that the AN-J-3A, which was, on paper, joint service equipment for the Army and Navy, but actually a Navy jacket, was re-classified. Whereas for previous jackets, the Navy had treated “drawing number” as the higher-order category and “type” and “specification” as two names for the same thing (e.g. drawing number AN-6552, type/specification AN-J-3), now, under the Department of Defense, “type” seems to become the umbrella category. Hence, the Navy’s jacket was now listed “Type G-1, Specification 55J14.” This new method of bookkeeping was evidently not confined to the Navy, because Air Force flight jacket labels from this period also list a type and specification number.
The 55J14 had six manufacturers: Aviators Clothing Co. (formerly the well-known Air Force contractor, Aero Leather Clothing), L.W. Foster Sportswear, A. Pritzker & Sons, Star Sportswear, Burjac Sportswear (formerly Edmund T. Church Co.), and the (now incredibly rare) B.-G. Inc. (FG 123). Of these, the Aviators Clothing Co. jackets have proven extremely prone to red rot (Sheeley, 27 Sep. '22), and collectors are advised to be careful when buying a jacket of this contract.
A certain number of what appear to be Foster and Star 55J14s have an unusual spec label that reads simply “BUAER - U.S. NAVY G-1 FLIGHT JACKET SPEC. 55J14 (AER)” without any indication of contract number or manufacturer. These jackets also have an unusual, straight-pull Conmar or Talon zipper, instead of the usual bell pull. The Talons can tentatively be dated to the 1950s. As you can see below, Foster and Star both had a contract for the 55J14 in Fiscal Year 1950. It is thus possible (but at this point unverifiable) that these were additional jackets tacked onto Foster N383S-29897 and Star N383Ss-39943, both from Fiscal Year 1950. The fact that the Korean War began that very year provides a plausible reason why the Navy might have needed more jackets.
By contrast, it has also been speculated that these might be early versions of the 55J14 (Chapman CD> 55J14> Foster #3), although the late date of the Talon zippers makes this dubious. We also have doubts about whether there would really have been a need for test jackets, given how much continuity we see in Navy jackets – the 55J14 really does just seem to be the AN-J-3A under a new filing system. Nevertheless, both hypotheses are possible, and we leave it to the readers to make up their own minds, or indeed to remain agnostic.
55J14 jackets have been characterized as shorter than previous specifications, tighter in the gut, and with longer sleeves. This is an accurate description of the Foster contracts, but, Star and B.-G. Inc. had short sleeves, relative to their torsos, and the Aviators Clothing Co. contract is unusually blousy. Given that Foster received just under half of the 55J14 contracts, however, it’s easy to see how the 55J14 got this reputation. There thus aren’t any real consistent trends when it comes to the patterning of the 55J14s, and, as before, it is more productive to look at the differences between individual contractors, rather than different specifications.
The 55J14 nevertheless retains most of the characteristics of earlier intermediate flight jackets, such as the USN stencil under the collar. Most feature a blackened conmar zipper with a bell zipper pull. And as Dave Sheeley notes, it appears that the 55J14s were the last series of jackets to be made of both vegetable- and chromium-tanned goatskin; the last clear use of veg-tanned goatskin (amongst chrome-tanned goatskin) appeared in the 1950 B.-G. Inc. contract. The B.-G. 55J14 is also the last model USN jacket that was constructed using both nylon and cotton thread (https://www.vintageleatherjackets.org/threads/sheeleys-55j14-b-g-inc-g-1.21860/). We therefore follow Sheeley in characterizing the 55J14 as a transitional flight jacket.
6. G-1 (55J14) [1947 - 1950]
Many write-ups on the 55J14 (e.g. Eastman’s) can inadvertently leave readers confused about the relationship of the first G-1 to earlier flight jackets. Since the last Navy jacket prior to the 55J14 that most repro makers offer is the M-422A, novices can be forgiven for supposing that the Navy had just not been producing jackets for several years prior to the introduction of the G-1. In fact, if you look at the contract data from the previous section, the last of the AN-J-3A contracts was issued in the same fiscal year as the first of the G-1 jackets. What’s missing here is some context.
In July the same year that the first G-1 contracts went out, U.S. President Harry Truman signed into law the National Security Act of 1947, which established the Air Force as an independent branch of the United States military. While most people in our hobby are familiar with that date, the changes had far more wide-reaching impacts than just what roundel appeared on Air Force jackets. This Act of Congress established the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Council (Britannica: National Security Act). More importantly, for our purposes, it also consolidated the Departments of War and the Navy into a new Department of Defense. A key priority here was to streamline the administration of the U.S. Military and “eliminate the duplication of effort in the DoD” (Britannica: National Security Act).
In this light, it’s really not surprising that the AN-J-3A, which was, on paper, joint service equipment for the Army and Navy, but actually a Navy jacket, was re-classified. Whereas for previous jackets, the Navy had treated “drawing number” as the higher-order category and “type” and “specification” as two names for the same thing (e.g. drawing number AN-6552, type/specification AN-J-3), now, under the Department of Defense, “type” seems to become the umbrella category. Hence, the Navy’s jacket was now listed “Type G-1, Specification 55J14.” This new method of bookkeeping was evidently not confined to the Navy, because Air Force flight jacket labels from this period also list a type and specification number.
The 55J14 had six manufacturers: Aviators Clothing Co. (formerly the well-known Air Force contractor, Aero Leather Clothing), L.W. Foster Sportswear, A. Pritzker & Sons, Star Sportswear, Burjac Sportswear (formerly Edmund T. Church Co.), and the (now incredibly rare) B.-G. Inc. (FG 123). Of these, the Aviators Clothing Co. jackets have proven extremely prone to red rot (Sheeley, 27 Sep. '22), and collectors are advised to be careful when buying a jacket of this contract.
A certain number of what appear to be Foster and Star 55J14s have an unusual spec label that reads simply “BUAER - U.S. NAVY G-1 FLIGHT JACKET SPEC. 55J14 (AER)” without any indication of contract number or manufacturer. These jackets also have an unusual, straight-pull Conmar or Talon zipper, instead of the usual bell pull. The Talons can tentatively be dated to the 1950s. As you can see below, Foster and Star both had a contract for the 55J14 in Fiscal Year 1950. It is thus possible (but at this point unverifiable) that these were additional jackets tacked onto Foster N383S-29897 and Star N383Ss-39943, both from Fiscal Year 1950. The fact that the Korean War began that very year provides a plausible reason why the Navy might have needed more jackets.
By contrast, it has also been speculated that these might be early versions of the 55J14 (Chapman CD> 55J14> Foster #3), although the late date of the Talon zippers makes this dubious. We also have doubts about whether there would really have been a need for test jackets, given how much continuity we see in Navy jackets – the 55J14 really does just seem to be the AN-J-3A under a new filing system. Nevertheless, both hypotheses are possible, and we leave it to the readers to make up their own minds, or indeed to remain agnostic.
55J14 jackets have been characterized as shorter than previous specifications, tighter in the gut, and with longer sleeves. This is an accurate description of the Foster contracts, but, Star and B.-G. Inc. had short sleeves, relative to their torsos, and the Aviators Clothing Co. contract is unusually blousy. Given that Foster received just under half of the 55J14 contracts, however, it’s easy to see how the 55J14 got this reputation. There thus aren’t any real consistent trends when it comes to the patterning of the 55J14s, and, as before, it is more productive to look at the differences between individual contractors, rather than different specifications.
The 55J14 nevertheless retains most of the characteristics of earlier intermediate flight jackets, such as the USN stencil under the collar. Most feature a blackened conmar zipper with a bell zipper pull. And as Dave Sheeley notes, it appears that the 55J14s were the last series of jackets to be made of both vegetable- and chromium-tanned goatskin; the last clear use of veg-tanned goatskin (amongst chrome-tanned goatskin) appeared in the 1950 B.-G. Inc. contract. The B.-G. 55J14 is also the last model USN jacket that was constructed using both nylon and cotton thread (https://www.vintageleatherjackets.org/threads/sheeleys-55j14-b-g-inc-g-1.21860/). We therefore follow Sheeley in characterizing the 55J14 as a transitional flight jacket.
