Jacket's I've painted over the last year or so . . . with some lost in a fire.

[Fyve_By_Fyve]

I painted my first jacket during the Covid shut down of 2020. Since then I've done quite a few. I sold them at my shop as well as on eBay. Unfortunately my shop burned to the ground last month, taking with it a number of these jackets.

I have really enjoyed painting these and feel as though I have improved with each one. I've always tried to make them as historically accurate as possible but early on I made some mistakes. At first I was just painting them on any jacket that was modeled after an A-2, G-1 or G-3. Now I'm going to only paint those actual type repros from good companies. The research is as much fun as painting the jackets as each is really a tribute to the guys who flew these aircraft during the war.

I'm going to continue painting these and have just gotten a couple of Cooper A-2's and an Avirex. I may do some tribute jackets for particular aces as well as recreating the WASP jacket, which was sadly lost in the fire.

Here's some photos of the jackets & patches that I've done thus far . . .

 

[Fyve_By_Fyve]

Here are a few more that I did last year. Took these from my Instagram feed (fyvebyfyve on Instagram).

All hand painted. This was a Gibson & Barnes. Quality jacket. Sold for $550.00.

All hand painted by me. This was the third jacket I painted. It was a 1970's vintage jacket. Kind of like a G-1 or G-3.

This is the one squadron patch that I did not paint. Got it on eBay. The Air Corps patch is a WW2 original.

This was the second jacket I ever painted. I've gotten better since. The jacket was a mall brand.

 

[Silver Surfer]

Nice work, fyve. Hang around and show and tell with some of very talented patch makers-painters, and jacket nose artists haunting these halls.

 

[Fyve_By_Fyve]

I sure will! Glad to have found this forum. I'm sure I'll get some great ideas from it and hopefully share some as well.

I just got four more jackets (3 Coopers and an Avirex). Plan on painting these over the next couple of months.

 

[Fyve_By_Fyve]

This is the fire that destroyed my business:

 

[Fyve_By_Fyve]

Honored to have one of my jackets on display in the Queensland Air Museum. Sent it to them over the summer.

I made the patch for this one out of cut & sewn felt.

 

[STEVE S.]

This is the fire that destroyed my business:

Been there, done that back in 2010…

 

[Fyve_By_Fyve]

Man, I hate to see that. Seriously, I will never look at or hear about a fire story the same again. It's terrible when this happens. Truly feels like a death. I"m always remembering things that I lost. It's weird. Something will just pop into my head and then I'll remember . . . oh, that's gone too.

I was able to save some valuable things though.

A good example is my original Meindl Badge.

I found an original example of this extremely rare item at a local estate auction about ten years ago. I had it in a frame by my desk in the shop. I have a reproduction that I wear on an alpine cap when it gets very cold outside. I had that cap on a few weeks ago when I saw the badge and thought . . . "hey, I know where that was in the shop". The shop had not been razed at that point and I thought that I might be able to dig through the ash to find the badge. This was dangerous but given the rarity and value of the badge I thought it was worth the risk.

It was! I found it!

This badge was given to members of the 2nd Fallschirmjaeger Corps in Normandy by General Meindl. He had his personal estate silverware melted down and pressed into these badges. Thus, the rarity. Most of these men were killed in Normandy and at the Falaise Gap.

 

[Smithy]

Fyve_By_Fyve​