“A Better Fighting Garment…” 3.0 - The Guide to U.S. Navy Intermediate Leather Flight Jackets

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Appendix B: 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. Within the large number of civilian reproductions, some have had their manufacturer / specification label removed but USN punched on the windflap whilst others have had the label partially removed or overwritten.

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 VLJ @MikeyB-17 for drawing attention to @porkchops comments.

 

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Appendix C: Leather Tanning​

Flight jackets. It keeps coming up. Sheepskin. Horsehide. Cowhide. Goatskin. Chrome or vegetable tanned? The answer is chrome-tanned.

Being a US Navy thread, we'll focus on goatskin. A substantial supply of goatskin, around one third, was from East India due to the Sino-Japanese War beginning in 1937. And Indian goatskin was predominantly Alum tanned (mostly for handbags and novelty items), not vegetable. Alum tanning is a predecessor to chrome tanning, but the chemicals used are water soluble making the leather susceptible to water damage. Chrome tanning, besides being the fastest and cheapest method, isn't damaged by exposure to water. There are numerous orders during the war, explicitly describing how the different leather suppliers and tanning methods from around the world needed to be dispositioned, but the snippet below pretty much sums it up:

Indian Information Index Vol. VIII, Government of India, Bureau of Public Information, 1941

 

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Appendix D: Navy Jackets in the Movies - “Top Gun” [1986]​

No discussion of Navy flight jackets would be complete without a brief nod to the 1986 film “Top Gun,” which for many is the first point of reference for the G-1 flight jacket. Many of us were first introduced to this hobby through memories of having watched the movie and admired Maverick’s jacket. Reproductions of this film jacket are widely available, but pictures of the original jacket are not available, apart from screenshots, and so the contract (assuming it was not a costume jacket) has not been verified. We suspect that one of the jackets was a Foster 55-J-14. As Jeff Thurston, among others, has observed, the faint vertical stitch on the pencil pocket and the wide placement of the pockets greatly limits the possibilities. The screen-used jacket appears to be over-sized for Cruise’s frame, and modified with padded shoulders to match ‘80s trends. It would be interesting to hear from anyone who worked on the film or might know more about this so, for now, we will simply speculate, after a conversation with a jacket maker, that Tom may have had more than one jacket in the costume wardrobe and one might’ve been a Foster 55-J-14.

For the 2022 sequel, “Top Gun: Maverick,” we are on much more solid footing. The film’s costume designer has said that the jacket from the original movie was not in wearable condition anymore, and they decided to create a new jacket. Getting the G-1 jacket right was the most difficult part of creating Cruise’s costumes for the movie, in spite of how little screen time it gets, and the jacket that appears in the sequel film was basically a “Franken-jacket” (her words) put together from about 40 different original G-1s that they had acquired (

).

 

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Bibliography​

The information here is primarily Jan's compendium of VLJ threads and photographs that have informed our guide through multiple facets on each of these contracts, given depth and context by some extraordinary historical information amassed by 33-1729 below. If you know more, please share. We found once-trusted sources to contain a number of errors so it’s best to verify findings, as with any thoughtful research.

• Allocations and Priorities Guide, Issue 7, Coordinators' Corporation, Chicago, IL, 1942
• Anon.: Navy Department Specification - Jackets, Aviation, Leather. 37J1, July 1, 1927
• Anon.: Navy Department Specification - Jackets, Aviators'. 37J1a, Dec. 1, 1932
• Anon.: Navy Aeronautical Specification - Jackets, Leather, Intermediate, Aviators'. M-422, Mar. 28, 1940
• Anon.: Navy Aeronautical Specification - Jackets, Leather, Intermediate, Aviators'. M-422a, Oct. 1, 1940
• Anon.: Army-Navy Aeronautical Specification Intermediate* - Jackets, Leather Flying. AN-J-3, Apr. 15, 1943
• Anon.: Army-Navy Aeronautical Specification - Jackets, Leather Flying. AN-J-3a, Oct. 5, 1943
• Anon.: Navy Aeronautical Specification - Jackets, Flight, Leather, Intermediate, G-1, 55-J-14, Oct 31, 1947
• Anon.: Navy Aeronautical Standard - Fastener - Interlocking Slide. Drawing AN 229, Dec 23, 1943
• Anon.: Navy Aeronautical Standard - Fastener - Interlocking Slide. Drawing AN 229, rev. Dec 16, 1949
• Anon.: Navy Aeronautical Standard - Fastener - Snap and Curtain. Drawing AN 227, Nov 28, 1941
• Anon.: Navy Aeronautical Standard - Fastener - Snap and Curtain. Drawing AN 227, rev. Sept 30, 1949
• Anon.: Navy Aeronautical Standard - Jacket: Leather flying. Drawing AN 6552, rev., May 1947
• Anon.: Military Specification - Jackets, Flight, Leather, Intermediate, G-1. MIL-J-7823, Nov 21, 1951
• Anon.: Military Specification - Jackets, Flying, Man's, Type G-1. MIL-J-7823A, Nov 28, 1958
• Anon.: Military Specification - Jackets, Flying, Man's, Type G-1. MIL-J-7823B, Oct. 7, 1960
• Anon.: Military Specification - Jackets, Flying, Man's, Intermediate, Type G-1. MIL-J-7823C, Sep. 3, 1963
• Anon.: Military Specification - Jackets, Flying, Man's, Intermediate, G-1. MIL-J-7823D, Apr. 19, 1966
• Anon.: Military Specification - Jackets, Flyer's, Intermediate, G-1. MIL-J-7823E, Jan. 15, 1971
• Anon.: Detail Specification - Jackets, Flyer's, Intermediate, G-1. MIL-DTL-7823F, Jun. 9, 2020
• Aviation Supply, Navy Training Courses, US Government Printing Office, Washington DC, 1945
• Aviation Supply Office, Catalog of Aeronautical Materials, Spare Parts & Equipment, Flight Gear, Recreational Apparatus, Sporting Goods and Related Articles, Class 37, US Navy, Aviation Supply Office, Philadelphia, PA, Dec 1943
• Aviation Supply Office, Catalog of Aeronautical Materials, Spare Parts & Equipment, Pilots' and Aircrewman's Flight Clothing and Related Accessories, US Navy, Aviation Supply Office, Philadelphia, PA, May 1945
• Board of Contract Appeals Decisions, Nos. 136-162, U.S. Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals, Commerce Clearing House, Inc., Chicago, IL, 1962
• Case Auctions, Knoxville, TN, Lot 580: Rear Admiral Ballentine Naval Flight Jacket and Archive, Jan 26, 2013
• Commerce Business Daily, US Government Procurement Invitations, Issues 2086-2127, pg 31, 1998
• Defense Standardization Program Journal, Fort Belvoir, VA, July 2002
• Environmental Effects on Polymeric Materials, Vol 2, Interscience Publishers, 1968
• Federal Register, Vol 16, Nos 84-92, Washington DC, May 1951
• Flying and Popular Aviation, Vol. XXX No. 1, "Special U.S. Naval Aviation", Ziff-Davis Publ Co., Chicago, Jan 1942
• Glossary of US Naval Abbreviations, OPNAV 29-P1000, Navy Department, Washington D.C., Apr 1949
• Index of Specifications and Standards, Department of the Navy, Military Index, Volume III, NAVSANDA Publication No. 62, US Government Printing Office, Washington DC, Apr 1951
• Index of Specifications and Standards, Department of the Navy, Military Index, Volume III, NAVSANDA Publication No. 62, US Government Printing Office, Washington DC, Apr 1952
• Index of Specifications and Standards, Department of the Navy, Military Index, Volume III, NAVSANDA Publication No. 62, US Government Printing Office, Washington DC, Apr 1953
• Index of Specifications and Standards, Department of the Navy, Military Index, Volume III, NAVSANDA Publication No. 62, US Government Printing Office, Washington DC, Feb 1954
• Indian Information Index Vol. VIII, Government of India, Bureau of Public Information, 1941
• Investigation of the Naval Defense Program, House of Representatives, Naval Affairs Investigating Committee, Washington D.C., Jan 19, 1942
• National Defense Program Contracts and Expenditures as Reported in Press Releases of May 1 - May 15, Office of Government Reports, Washington D.C., 1941
• Navy Filing Manual. (Fourth Edition). United States Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1941
• Summaries of the Conservation Orders for Use in Economic Research, Statistics Division, War Production Board, 1942
• WSC = Alphabetical Listing of Major War Supply Contracts, Cumulative June 1940 through September 1945, Civilian production administration, Industrial Statistics Division, 1946

Books:

• FG = Aota, M., Full Gear: Collector's Guide on Us Military Flying clothing from 1920s thru 1970s (1st ed., Vol. 1). Kazi Co Ltd., 2005
• Grossnick, R., United States Naval Aviation 1910-1995, Naval Historical Center, Department of the Navy, Washington DC, 1997
• Sweeting, C. G., Combat Flying Clothing: Army Air Forces Clothing through World War II. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1984

Compact Disk:

• Chapman, J., United States Flight Jackets, Good Wear Leather Coat Co., 2004

If you have more information please do share that in the original – now Discussion – thread first so that this thread can remain a tightly focused sticky. Thanks !