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“A Better Fighting Garment…” 2.0 - A Revised Guide to the U.S. Navy's Intermediate Leather Flight Jackets

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mulceber

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This iteration of the guide has been cancelled. Research of U.S. Navy Intermediate Flying Jackets should be made under “A Better Fighting Garment 3.0”.

Private purchase, PX or civilian market G-1 jackets

Over the years members of the Forum have discussed the existence or otherwise of private purchase G-1 jackets bought on the open, civilian, market. Various G-1 style jackets have been seen. Some have had their manufacturer / specification label removed but USN punched on the windflap whilst others have had the label partially removed or overwritten. The impression we have is of a similar approach to that taken with AN-J-3 jackets released to the civilian market.

One fellow member here, @porkchop, described his military experience in the following post:

“...One of my duties required me to control the issue, purchase and destruction of G-1 flight jackets.

While many jacket manufacturers supplied us with jackets, there were a few that also provided overruns to the Navy Exchange System (NES). If a manufacturer made a contract overrun they could provide that overrun to the NES as long as they followed very specific rules, to wit: (1) the USN "punch" could not be in the windflap (but I never saw this enforced...some NES jackets had it, others didn't); and (2) the label had to be changed (this was enforced). The NES jackets came off the same manufacturing line as the "issue" jackets. Therefore, these jackets were not"reproductions." The manufacturers that I am intimately aware of that did this practice on a continual basis were Brill, Orchard, Cooper and Excelled. (Of course there may have been others that I am not aware of.) …”

https://www.vintageleatherjackets.o...re-they-military-or-civilian.7154/#post-66013

In a previous thread discussing a G-1 with a central seam down the back @porkchop commented:

“Windflaps were typically cut off unserviceable G-1s by the Navy (more specifically the squadron paraloft - parachute loft - personnel) before they were released for sale to the various army-navy surplus stores that wanted them. If a jacket had some manufacturing or other "damage" that rendered the jacket unfit for further service and/or issuance, the squadrons would cut off the windflap (and sometimes cut out the tags) and then sell them to the surplus stores. If memory serves, and I may be way off, but I seem to remember that at that particular time it was "illegal" for a civilian to wear officially issued flight jackets, so anything forwarded from a squadron to a surplus store, for example, had to be sanitized even if the article was damaged.”

https://www.vintageleatherjackets.org/threads/my-anomalous-new-g-1.711/#post-7715

Our thanks to @MikeyB-17 for drawing attention to @porkchop's comments.
 
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