WWII USAAF A-2 Flight Jacket, Perry Sportswear 23377, 31st Troop Carrier Squadron Disney Duck Back Paint, Size 40

An early Perry Sportswear A-2 on contract W535-ac-23377, hand-painted for a man of the 31st Troop Carrier Squadron with a C-47, a falling paratrooper and three Disney-style ducklings under the line 'They've got the guts'.

The Type A-2, 1931 to 1943

The Type A-2 is the leather flight jacket against which every other is measured. It entered service test on 20 September 1930 and was made standard issue for the Army Air Corps on 9 May 1931, cut to specification 94-3040, which called for seal brown horsehide, and to Drawing 30-1415, the number that appears on the woven label of every wartime example. Its vocabulary is now so familiar it is easy to forget it was ever designed: a knitted waistband and cuffs, two patch pockets with snap flaps, shoulder straps, a shirt-style collar held closed by a small hook, and a zip front built to be worked with gloved hands.

For a decade the A-2 was the mark of the military aviator, and in the first year of America's war it became something more personal: a canvas. Yet its official life was short. In 1942 General H. H. 'Hap' Arnold cancelled further A-2 contracts in favour of cloth flight jackets, and on 27 April 1943 the A-2 was declared limited standard. Every original A-2 therefore belongs to a closed and finite population, made by a handful of contractors over little more than a decade, and only a fraction of those survive with their wartime decoration intact.

Perry Sportswear and Contract 23377

Perry Sportswear of Newburgh, New York, made A-2s on three government orders. The first of these, W535-ac-23377, was awarded on 31 December 1941, three weeks after Pearl Harbor, and called for roughly 20,000 jackets to be delivered by May 1942. It is the smallest and earliest of Perry's A-2 contracts, which is why collectors who know the Perry family well treat a 23377 label as a find in its own right.

Forum consensus among students of the contract is that 23377 jackets were cut from goatskin rather than horsehide; no confirmed horsehide example has surfaced, and we describe this piece accordingly. Originals carried Crown or Conmar zips, a collar stand and a dull orange lining, and this jacket's orange-red rust lining sits comfortably within that pattern. The label here reads 'PERRY SPORTS WEAR INC / NEWBURGH, N.Y.', with the drawing number 30-1415, contract W535-AC-23377, the legend 'AIR FORCES U.S. ARMY' and size 40, and the contract line is clearly legible.

The 31st Troop Carrier Squadron

The large black stencil across the back reads '31 TCS'. The letters are worn, but the reading fits the 31st Troop Carrier Squadron, and everything else on the jacket points the same way. The squadron was constituted on 28 January 1942 as the 31st Transport Squadron and activated on 2 March 1942 at Drew Field, Florida. On 4 July 1942 it became a Troop Carrier Squadron, and from 15 June 1942 to 14 April 1944 it served in the 89th Troop Carrier Group.

Its aircraft tell the story of American airlift in miniature: first impressed airliners of the DC-3 family, designated C-49, C-50 and C-53, then the purpose-built C-47 from 1943. Its stations were all stateside, at Drew Field, Camp Williams in Wisconsin, Sedalia in Missouri, and Del Valle, later Bergstrom, in Texas. In March 1944 it became a Replacement Training Unit, and on 14 April 1944 it was disbanded, its personnel passing to the 807th AAF Base Unit.

We are plain about what this means. The 31st was a training squadron and did not fly in combat. Its work was to prepare the crews who later carried paratroopers and towed gliders into Normandy, Holland and across the Rhine. The jacket belongs to the men who taught America to fly into battle rather than to the battles themselves, and its art reads best in that light.

He Conquers Who Gets There First

The embroidered insignia on the right shoulder, a gold eagle on blue above the scroll 'VINCIT QUI PRIMUM GERIT', is that of I Troop Carrier Command. Formed on 30 April 1942 as Air Transport Command and renamed on 4 July 1942, it took its motto from the idea that victory belongs to whoever arrives first. On the left shoulder sits an embroidered 'AIRBORNE / TROOP CARRIER' shield with parachute, glider wings and star.

Between December 1942 and August 1945 the command trained 4,608 aircrews for overseas service and around 5,000 glider pilots, first on the C-47 and later the C-46, and from September 1944 it ran a pathfinder school at Stout Field, Indiana. It was disbanded on 4 November 1945. Few jackets carry the full troop-carrier vocabulary as completely as this one: unit stencil, command insignia and airborne shield together.

Ducks in Jump Helmets

During the war Walt Disney Productions drew around 1,200 insignia for American and Allied units free of charge, through a small team of six artists led by Hank Porter. Donald Duck appears in at least 216 of those designs. Mickey Mouse appears in 37, never for combat units. The cartoon emblem became one of the most recognisable visual languages of the American war effort, copied, adapted and repainted by squadron artists and sign painters wherever airmen gathered.

The back of this jacket speaks that language fluently. A grey C-47 crosses the upper panel with a paratrooper dropping clear, and beneath it three ducklings of the Huey, Dewey and Louie type, in green helmets, one going out under canopy with his pack, sit above the script 'They've got the guts'. It is a self-mocking airborne joke, affectionate and a little defiant, and it belongs to the same instinct that put cartoon characters on the noses of bombers. On the left chest a painted disc shows Donald and his nephews in a bat-and-ball scene. We have not been able to confirm that either design was drawn by the Disney studio for the 31st Troop Carrier Squadron, so we describe them as Disney-character artwork in the manner of the studio's wartime insignia.

Why Japan Collects the A-2

No country studies the A-2 more closely than Japan. Japanese collectors helped lift the international value of painted originals over recent decades, and the country's reproduction houses built entire reputations on reconstructing individual contracts, down to the lining shade and zip pattern, from surviving wartime examples. That culture has made Japan the world's deepest collector base for original flight jackets, and it is from that base that this Perry jacket comes. For a collector who already owns a fine reproduction of a Disney-insignia A-2, this is the original document such pieces set out to interpret.

The Piece

This is a size 40 Perry A-2 on the earliest of the company's three contracts, cut from the goatskin associated with 23377 and still soft in the hand. The surface finish has worn away in places, which lets the grain show through in the way collectors of early-war jackets know well. The rust-orange lining is consistent with the contract and has wear at the collar and hem; the collar-stand lining has been customised or repaired at some point in the jacket's life.

The decoration is the reason to stop. On the back, the painted C-47, paratrooper and three helmeted ducklings sit above 'They've got the guts' and the big '31 TCS' stencil, the whole composed with a sign painter's confidence. On the left chest is the painted Disney-style disc of Donald and his nephews; on the right, the name 'JOHN' above a gold eagle on a blue disc. On the shoulders, the embroidered Airborne Troop Carrier shield and I Troop Carrier Command insignia complete one of the most coherent troop-carrier ensembles we have handled. Marks of earlier, removed patches are visible, as they are on many wartime jackets.

A previous owner reports that this jacket has been illustrated in an English-language flight-jacket reference book. We have not yet confirmed the title, page or plate, and nothing in this description depends on it. What can be confirmed is already rare: an early Perry contract, a named wearer's first name, a full troop-carrier insignia set and Disney-character art painted for a squadron that trained the airborne crews of the European war.

Details

• Type: Type A-2 leather flight jacket
• Maker: Perry Sportswear Inc., Newburgh, New York
• Contract / label: Drawing 30-1415 · Contract W535-ac-23377 (awarded 31 December 1941) · 'Air Forces U.S. Army'
• Era: 1942, Second World War
• Leather / shell: Goatskin, per contract consensus for 23377 (not horsehide)
• Hardware: Period zip with one side of the tape replaced; slider possibly replaced; collar hook present, female half missing
• Lining & knits: Orange-red rust lining with wear at collar and hem; collar-stand lining customised; waist knit possibly original; cuff knits replaced
• Decoration: Back: hand-painted C-47, paratrooper, three helmeted ducklings, 'They've got the guts', '31 TCS' stencil. Left chest: painted Donald Duck and nephews disc. Right chest: 'JOHN' over painted eagle disc. Shoulders: embroidered Airborne Troop Carrier shield and I Troop Carrier Command insignia
• Tagged size: 40
• Measurements: Shoulder 45 cm · Chest (pit to pit) 52 cm · Sleeve 63 cm · Length 64 cm

Condition

• Zip working; one side of the tape replaced, slider possibly replaced
• Cuff knits replaced; waist knit may be original
• Female half of the collar hook missing
• Lining worn through at the collar and torn near the hem; collar-stand lining customised or repaired
• Surface finish worn away in areas; leather remains soft
• Marks of removed patches
• Paint and stencil show honest age wear consistent with eight decades

Condition grade B on the Japanese scale; see Japanese condition ranks, explained.

Authenticity & Care

The label, contract and size tags, leather, stitching, zip and hardware, paint and insignia are examined together and documented in Japan before dispatch; anything that cannot be confirmed is stated plainly in the description. Every piece carries the Japonista authenticity guarantee. Store on a broad padded hanger away from direct light and heat, and leave the painted back untreated; condition the plain leather sparingly, if at all, with a product suited to aged goatskin.

Delivery from Japan

Packed by hand in Japan and shipped insured and tracked by EMS or an equivalent express service. Import duties and taxes, where applicable, are payable on arrival. Every sale is final; please ask anything before you buy, and see our published policy.

Every figure above is taken by hand with the garment laid flat, in centimetres. Lay a shirt or jacket you already love beside them and allow a centimetre or two of margin, the quiet safeguard on a final sale. Our size guide to tops and jackets turns pit-to-pit figures into US, UK, EU and Japanese sizes, and for anything it leaves open the curator team replies within one Tokyo business day.

Further reading: Read our guide The A-2 Reborn: How Japan Rebuilt the Flight Jacket, Stitch and Seam and look up A-2 jacket in the Japonista Lexicon.

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