Leather Flying Jackets...

[RickM]

Pretty cool that a thread about leather jackets can provide some really interesting stories/information/history/etc. My family's service was Army, with no pilots (or jackets) in the bunch, but plenty of interesting mementos left behind. Grandpa was an OCS grad, but I hadn't heard the term 90-day wonder until this thread.

More so then just being pushed through and being made a 2nd Lieutenant, the 90-day wonder moniker was applicable to my old man because he was in the first waves of replacement pilots...hurried through flight school and thrown into service because the first generation of pilots had had their ranks thinned, (like Saab said..mortality rates were brutal) and the U.S. was stepping up daylight bombing operations and had just begun to realize that the bombers needed fighter escort. Worse then the aerial combat, (brief, infrequent, but very intense, my dad said..) was the ground attack operations, my dad said. Strafing trains, railyards, and the worst; troops on the ground... was both dangerous and horrifying to do. Little wonder he didn't talk much about it..and he never flew after the war. Even for airline travel during his business career, he always had about 5 VO and waters under the belt..and he always carried his WW2 dogtags for luck.

Crikey..I don't even know how the commercial guys like Saab do it every day..I'd be scared pissless. Pilots always sound so blase'..but all you need is one time where you gotta land that damn thing in the Hudson, and well....Shit.

[Matthew Strongin]

Little wonder he didn't talk much about it..

I've seen the mementos, but never got the story behind them. I'd ask as a kid, but he didn't want to talk and I was too young to comprehend. He had some amazing photos that he took too, Nazis surrendering in trenches and stuff like that, but still the "stories" were brief. But get that man talking about how he met my grandmother or Cadillacs, and you'd know he wasn't one to avoid telling stories. I'm sure as little as he wanted me to hear about his experiences, he wanted to talk about it even less. Thanks for sharing, folks, this thread is bringing up some old memories.

[Bruce Day]

I have my leather A2 as issued to me in the 80's when the USAF began reissuing these jackets. Its slim, but at 65 years old and 5'9" 165lbs, still fits fine. Biking and hiking keep the weight down. I flew in 8th, 4th and 15th Air Force units, the 8th during the Vietnam war, the 4th during the Gulf wars.

More aircrewmen were killed from the 8th Air Force ( Bomber Command) in WWII than there were Marines and Navy personnel killed in the war. This is not to denigrate the Navy or Marines, just to point out the significant losses of the 8th. The figures: 6000 heavy bombers lost, 2500 remained at the end of the war; 30,000 KIA or missing in action, another 30,000 POWs; an aircrewman assigned to the 8th had only a one in three chance of completing his tour. Fighter losses were almost as significant.

The high loss rate continued through the Vietnam War. Although the 8th Air Force heavy bomber units ( B-52's) had a high rate of survival, some of the fighter units did not. The F-105 fighter/bomber units had a 40% return rate among pilots and a 110% loss rate for assigned aircraft. I was unable to get life insurance other than GI life insurance which was capped at $50,000.