Actually, the only vintage flight jacket that I own is my Dad's A-2 from WWII. He flew in the CBI Theatre, and has one of those multipiece, hand-tooled leather blood chits on the back. The other insignia, like the CBI insignia and the Army Air Forces patch, are also hand tooled leather, except for the squadron insignia, which was beautifully embroidered, also in India (present day Bangladesh).
My other jackets are much more recent. They are things I wear.
My A-1 is actually capeskin. About ten years ago Willis & Geiger made some up from capeskin; this is one of them. At present most of the good names making jackets are using horsehide for their A-1s; getting large enough pieces of capeskin, tanned the right way and dyed the right color, to do it right is virtually impossible in the small quantities that this little segment of the market supports.
A-1s were funny in that they were quite inconsistent from one jacket to the next. There was a lot of modification and customizing. Not all jackets had the straight up, stove pipe like collar with the two latch buttons. Many had a collar like those on a baseball jacket.
Mine had the stove pipe with buttons but I had it changed to the baseball collar for comfort. I have an oak stump for a neck (always have had a thick neck, and, some say, a head to match) and the original collar was too tight for me.
I find it very comfortable. The drape is very nice but I suspect that comes from the capeskin, primarily.
Regards,
OCD
Posted on Nov 25, 2001, 4:14 AM from IP address 64.24.247.72