Lord Flashheart
Well-Known Member
4. AN-J-3 [1943] - The Flight Jacket that Wasn’t
By 1943, changes were in the works. Early in the war, the Navy and the Army Air Force had come to an agreement to standardize flight clothing and equipment that was of use to both organizations. They hoped to cut development time and costs, and speed up production, a challenge that was already becoming apparent as the United States ramped up wartime production. These combined-use items would be given a specification number starting with AN, for Army-Navy (Sweeting 6).
The plan actually compounded production woes, however: the Air Force and Navy used similar flight equipment, but they needed different things out of it:
Designing and producing gear that met both branches’ needs thus actually taxed American manufacturing more than allowing them to have separate gear. The M-422A, for example, had features that made it 30-40% more expensive to produce than the Army’s A-2 jacket (Sheeley 3/29/23), but none of these features were of much interest to the Air Force, which was confronting what amounted to a pandemic of frostbite among their men (Miller 2, 90-2, 240, 337, 381). The Air Force was the first to become fed up with the agreement and begin phasing out the AN-gear. By the end of the war, the only AN-item of clothing that was still standard issue in the Air Force was the AN-H-16, a winter flying helmet (Sweeting 6).
The doomed plan saw the creation of a light, cotton flight jacket with a drawing number of AN-6551, and a type number of AN-J-2 (a garment the Air Force never used, but that the Navy used until the end of the war), an intermediate flight jacket (drawing number AN-6552, type number AN-J-3) and a winter weight flight jacket (AN-6553, AN-J-4).
Test contracts for the AN-J-3 were sent out to multiple companies, among them Willis & Geiger and Monarch. None of these contracts seem to have been much more detailed than “give us a compromise between the M-422A and the A-2, and give it a leather collar,” because the resulting jackets were all over the map. Some had epaulets, some didn’t. Some had an interior wind flap, while others had an exterior storm flap. Some had interior leather facings along the zipper, on others the liner goes all the way to the zipper.
The Army got as far as signing the documents to close the book on the A-2 (see below), and create the AN-J-3. But before the project could really get off the ground, the Air Force backed out. By the time the updated version of the Class 13 catalog was released at the end of September 1943, the B-9, B-10, and B-11 jackets were already listed, and the AN-J-3 was nowhere to be found, although the A-2, B-3, D-1, B-6 and even the AN-J-4 are all still listed (AAFIC 51-5). Occasional AN-J-3s have been proven to have ended up in the hands of pilots (see below for an example of one), but most of the ones now in the hands of collectors are unprovenanced. And none of these jackets has ever been found with a military spec label.
Willis & Geiger, at least, evidently liked the design, because they kept making jackets after the project was canceled and sold them to Abercrombie & Fitch. The Navy, left without a partner that they needed to placate, steered the AN-6552 AN-J-3 project back toward the established design that they were already happy with.
By 1943, changes were in the works. Early in the war, the Navy and the Army Air Force had come to an agreement to standardize flight clothing and equipment that was of use to both organizations. They hoped to cut development time and costs, and speed up production, a challenge that was already becoming apparent as the United States ramped up wartime production. These combined-use items would be given a specification number starting with AN, for Army-Navy (Sweeting 6).
The plan actually compounded production woes, however: the Air Force and Navy used similar flight equipment, but they needed different things out of it:
- For the Air Force, the primary concern was maximizing warmth, which meant that they needed increasingly-specialized production facilities as materials they used became more experimental (Sweeting 6) – witness the fact that the switch away from leather and shearling coincides with many of their tried-and-true contractors gradually being pushed out by new companies (FG 68-71).
- The Navy’s concern, meanwhile, was the proximity of their personnel to salt water, which necessitated corrosion-resistant equipment. This meant raw materials – like brass – that were in high demand (Sweeting 6-7).
Designing and producing gear that met both branches’ needs thus actually taxed American manufacturing more than allowing them to have separate gear. The M-422A, for example, had features that made it 30-40% more expensive to produce than the Army’s A-2 jacket (Sheeley 3/29/23), but none of these features were of much interest to the Air Force, which was confronting what amounted to a pandemic of frostbite among their men (Miller 2, 90-2, 240, 337, 381). The Air Force was the first to become fed up with the agreement and begin phasing out the AN-gear. By the end of the war, the only AN-item of clothing that was still standard issue in the Air Force was the AN-H-16, a winter flying helmet (Sweeting 6).
The doomed plan saw the creation of a light, cotton flight jacket with a drawing number of AN-6551, and a type number of AN-J-2 (a garment the Air Force never used, but that the Navy used until the end of the war), an intermediate flight jacket (drawing number AN-6552, type number AN-J-3) and a winter weight flight jacket (AN-6553, AN-J-4).
Test contracts for the AN-J-3 were sent out to multiple companies, among them Willis & Geiger and Monarch. None of these contracts seem to have been much more detailed than “give us a compromise between the M-422A and the A-2, and give it a leather collar,” because the resulting jackets were all over the map. Some had epaulets, some didn’t. Some had an interior wind flap, while others had an exterior storm flap. Some had interior leather facings along the zipper, on others the liner goes all the way to the zipper.
The Army got as far as signing the documents to close the book on the A-2 (see below), and create the AN-J-3. But before the project could really get off the ground, the Air Force backed out. By the time the updated version of the Class 13 catalog was released at the end of September 1943, the B-9, B-10, and B-11 jackets were already listed, and the AN-J-3 was nowhere to be found, although the A-2, B-3, D-1, B-6 and even the AN-J-4 are all still listed (AAFIC 51-5). Occasional AN-J-3s have been proven to have ended up in the hands of pilots (see below for an example of one), but most of the ones now in the hands of collectors are unprovenanced. And none of these jackets has ever been found with a military spec label.
Willis & Geiger, at least, evidently liked the design, because they kept making jackets after the project was canceled and sold them to Abercrombie & Fitch. The Navy, left without a partner that they needed to placate, steered the AN-6552 AN-J-3 project back toward the established design that they were already happy with.
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