mulceber
Moderator
PREFACE
In December 2021 Phil, 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 were looking to fill what we perceived was a gap in the knowledge base on the forum and the original thread was written as a “Beginners Guide”, then with more updates version 2.0 became the “Revised Guide”, and now with a much updated version 3.0 it becomes simply “The Guide”. We were very grateful for the help of a number of Forum members and others in developing the content.
Since our Beginners Guide was first posted the thread has inspired discussion on all manner of points associated with these Navy jackets. In version 3.0 we moved away from sources, such as conventional reference books, and focused on using the underlying, verifiable evidence, such as the original government specifications, and records of the contracts. The purpose of this shift was to remove any speculation or, at a minimum, expressly identify where it may exist rather than repeat stories that may be unfounded. This somewhat reduces what we can say, but emerging documents from various government archives have shifted our narrative and exposed failings in the conventional reference books that are used in this hobby.
We have made the decision to retain that original thread, unaltered, as a Discussion thread, along with version 2.0, although the text has been grayed out to avoid confusion. Whilst this may appear confusing we have concluded that this preserves the transparency of the information as it emerged. Following the pattern established by the A-2 Jacket thread, we will also include a post at the very end summarizing the changes from version 2.0 to 3.0, so that readers who want to be informed, but have already gone through one – or two: yikes! – Navy jacket threads in the past can have everything summarized for them in one concise post.
We encourage the use of the discussion thread, rather than this resource, as the place for discussion to develop the knowledge of the forum so that this sticky can remain tightly focused and readily searchable.
On a personal level I would like to give @33-1729 special credit for his inexhaustible spirit in digging these records out of the archives, as well as Phil and Wei for their readiness to dive into this topic yet again.
