Bomber-jacket leather and our law

(ArtKramr) wrote in message ...
Subject: Bomber-jacket leather and our law
From: "Tex Houston" 777
Date: 9/12/03 6:32 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:


"Mike Yared" wrote in message
...
from http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm
Buy Pakistani?
The Pentagon is about to waive "buy American" provisions of U.S. law
and
allow Pakistan to provide the goatskin leather used in the distinctive
U.S.
aviator bomber jackets. The Defense Department has notified a U.S. leather
tanner that it will waive provisions of the law known as the Berry
Amendment
that requires the Pentagon to buy key components from U.S. manufacturers.
In
April, the Pentagon announced it would buy 12,000 to 30,000 of the brown,
fur-collared bomber jackets over the next several years.

No reason US tanneries can't meet that small demand spread over
several years. Jeez, more leather jackets than that where made in a
month during WWII.

I'm around the USAF a lot and I don't remember any such item as a brown
fur-collared bomber jacket as current issue. A-2 aircrew jacket maybe but I
think someone is describing a WWII item.

They are describing the USN G-1 (I'm wearing one today), but the spec
for that jacket was changed from goat to cow back in '69 or '70. G-1s
are still made of goat for the public, but I thought all the jackets
produced for the Navy were cow. Maybe some are goat...

The USAF uses goat for their current A-2, and recently made changes to
the jacket pattern to make it easier to procure quality goatskin for
the jackets.

As for using US or foreign leather, who cares? The US shouldn't even
be producing either jacket. Both the A-2 and G-1 are useless in the
cockpit of modern AC. I don't buy the story that there is a shortage
of goatskin in the US though.

If you go to my website and click on "After Koblenz" I am wearing a fur
collared flight jacket, but I don't recall the designation. It sure wasn't an A-2. The shot was made in 1944 at Florennes Belgium after the Koblenz mission.

You're wearing a B-10, probably my favorite flight jacket.
Standardized in July '43, arrived in the ETO in March '44 and were
used through the end of the war. No leather in it though... cotton
shell with an alpaca lining. Much warmer than an A-2 (or a B-3 if you
wear an F-3 suit under B-10) and much easier to mass produce.

~Michael