The Type A2 Flight Jacket Identification Manual

[Dr H]

Oh and for the HH/steer advocates amongst you, there is a section on DNA analysis (conducted at Leicester University, well respected in the field), which as a chemist I found very interesting.

 

[B-24J]

Just Received My Copy

I just received my copy (183) of Gary Eastman's book.

The book is even nicer than I expected!

I actually had some trouble ordering the book. Alan Eastman emailed me saying that my card/order had been denied by my bank.

After calling my bank I learned that they were denying ALL credit card orders from the UK due to a high incidence of fraud.

I had to get a special dispensation from the bank to authorize this transaction and poor Alan had to try another two times to get the order processed.

John

 

[Fletch]

The Eastman 23RD FTR GRP jacket that Gary Eastman is wearing has great leather work on the patches. Their web site has more photos of the jacket.

I often hear about the Italian made patches for the 15th Air Force, but has anyone in England tracked down the patch makers to the 8th Air Force? I'm sure that many if not all the painted images on the A-2s were done by USAAF personnel, but surely some of the leather patches were of English manufacture.

The common wisdom is that the incised leather designs were a purely Italian technique. I don't think anybody's looked in further.

 

[rocketeer]

I have seen a couple of tooled leather patches from the Pacific theatre units, ATC, also multi layered,
Some years back I had a fantastic patch, a tiger bursting through a Chinese star ripping a Japanese flag. Was almost 3D it had so many layers. I bought this, pre eBay days at a militaria fair, was attached to the remains of an A2. 14th Airforce?
Sold it to a young Japanese man who's grandfather was a pilot in the war