A2 Vintage - Summer Leather Jacket

When you think of aviator jackets, the A2 is the jacket you’re thinking of. The Army standardized this jacket on May, 1931, and immediately, no other piece of field clothing combined style and substance so well. When we think of the dashing pilots of World War II, in our minds, they’re always wearing the A2 jacket. The jacket was made of dark brown horsehide, lined with a light brown spun silk. The collar was an “Officer’s Collar” with snaps underneath, patch pockets, knit cuffs and waistband and epaulets. It had a zipper front (interlocking fastener); a lighter piece of leather with the name of the pilot printed on it was stitched on the left side of the front. But the changes weren’t all just cosmetic. The zipper was a big improvement for the pilots comfort in the cockpit, especially for gloved hands and the epaulets could hold parachute straps or the insignia of rank.

The A2 jacket first gained its fame among the legendary Flying Tigers. Technically, they were the 100 pilots of the American Volunteer Group, or AVG, who’d joined the Chinese Army as irregulars in early 1941 to fight the Japanese inside mainland China.