In 1915, 12 years after the first flight in North Carolina by the Wright Brothers, British Royal Flying Corpsmen were wearing long leather trench coats to take to the air. Staying warm was difficult enough but the length of their coats caused difficulties, as can well be imagined.

The U.S. labored on the quandary and designed instead waist length leather jackets for their airmen. Thus was the Flying jacket born.

The Royal Air Force kept developing flying jackets and as aircraft began to soar higher, lower temperatures were encountered, thus the leather jackets were lined with fur. This is why flying jackets, and other flight jackets are sometimes named RAF jackets. Later, fur was substituted with wool. These were known as Shearling jackets. Shearling jackets are a very superior lightweight item of clothing made with the best wool-on-lamb pelts. The soft suede acts as an excellent windbreaker, while the natural wool inside the jacket functions as nature’s preeminent insulator. A B-3 Shearling jacket is what made some call a flying jacket a “bomber jacket” instead.

Time marched onward, as more and more different designs of flying jackets were introduced, however the G-1 flying jacket was created circa 1938 to answer a special need for the US Navy. Lambskin was found to be too delicate to withstand the rigors of piloting a plane in daily use, and thus instead of lambskin, goatskins were used. Quality began to suffer during WWII, as makers of the jackets resorted to many deceptions in order to lower cost and increase production. The superb wool collars were replaced with synthetic synthetic-wool blends, and goatskin was no longer used. Rather, a cheaper, and less warm cowhide replaced it. In order to retain the “look” of goatskin the cowhide was embossed with the markings of goatskin.

Collectors of such jackets know the difference and look at not only the hide, and the lining of the jacket but also at the cut, pattern, fit and design. Things like authentic hidden pocket designs are often used to tell the dissimilarities between originals and fakes. Diverse years of production are identifiable in this manner provided the person is an expert of such clothing.

Although this particular style is called "Pearl Harbor", these A-2 jackets were actually used by the American Volunteer Group in China before America entered WW2.

The jacket was zipped up with an interlocking fastening device.

The pockets and collar were attached and made secure with black oxide nipple snaps while the neck was secured with a nickel based hook and eye connection

While each company used it’s own contracted materials and changed some patterns or designs, each had to follow the basic regulations set out in the contract. There were differences in the materials they would use or small pattern pieces but the basic design remained true to the contract.

The guidelines by the forces insisted on the winged Army Air Corps patch or a numbered Air Force patch to be on the left shoulder. A leather nametag and Squadron patches were the norm just above the left chest pocket.

Officers who wore the jacket often wore the insignia for their rank on the shoulder straps.

Everywhere you look you can see comments like “strictly limited edition”. There are brand-named leather bomber jackets everywhere.

Most of these jackets are interpretations of the original designs that were used initially by World War 2 aircrew. The main reason for having a leather jacket was to ward off the extreme cold that was encountered at high (up to 25,000 feet above sea level) altitudes where the “modern” WW2 fighters and bombers flew. The jackets were made from leather as the main requirement at those heights was the need to be warm.

But there were also a few other requirements that the jacket had to meet. The crews also needed a jacket which would not interfere with their controls or the operation of the aircraft. This was the reason for the ribbed cuffs – to ensure that there were no loose sleeves that could catch on anything. The length of the jacket was also to ensure that it would not impede the wearer in any way. If you had to get out of your aircraft in a hurry, you did not want to be impeded by a long coat tail that could get caught on something or that you could trip over. Small details like that could easily cause injuries or even kill the wearer. These factors may not seem important today, but they were then.

What other features are there of the bomber jacket that makes its original design unique?

The padded collar, although not unique to flight jackets, provides warmth around the neck area. The closed and padded cuffs also help to keep in body warmth and stop cold air from entering and moving up the arms. (Think how cold an open-sleeved jacket can get at times.)

The heavy-duty zip at the front meant that it was quick and easy to undo the jacket. Zips can sometimes be hard to get started when trying to close the jacket, but the important thing here was to be able to remove the jacket quickly.

Some jackets had an interior pocket. This was useful to keep small items in that could still be reached while sitting down in the aircraft in flight. The problem of putting such items in trouser pockets were that they were harder to get at. There was also the danger that when trying to remove one item from trouser pockets that other items could fall out and foul the equipment controls. Even today some light aircraft crashes have been caused by that happening.

A very well-known type of jacket is the leather (in some cases cow-hide) jacket used by the early settlers in what is now the United States of America. Often these jackets were fringed rather that having straight cut edges and it was very common for them to be featured in "western" style movies.

Frontier scouts working for the army wore them a lot - both during the day and also to sleep in at night.

China and Japan were closed to the western world and were unknown quantities – if in fact they were known at all. The uniforms of the armies of continental Europe tended to have a lot in common.

Very often neighboring countries had similar uniforms. The Belgium uniform of 1831 was closely modeled on the French uniform of the time.

Despite this, there has still been a great variety in the style of uniforms. It is noticeable that the uniform jacket in particular has drifted in and out of military fashion seemingly randomly. The colour, style, length and even the type of fastening has varied a lot from one country to another as well as from one period of time to another in the same country.

In Europe up until about 1670, the military jacket was an important part of a uniform. From then on it started to develop into more of a waist-coat, still initially made of leather, but then more commonly made of cloth. A garment used as a cloak started taking its place. This garment evolved into what is now a coat.

Jackets came in a vast range of colours. In the 1830’s the Argentine jacket was turquoise with a red collar and cuffs. By 1865 it had become a turquoise blue tunic with green collars and cuffs.

In 1799 the French Coptiz Legion was wearing light-green jackets. The 1842 French Volontars de la Charte wore a dark-blue jacket.

The 1650 German infantry jackets were made of elk leather and had blue cuffs. From 1735 the yellow German cavalry jackets were replaced by yellowish or straw-coloured cloth jackets. However the yellow jackets were still used by the 2nd Regiment until 1806, although as they were cleaned with whiting, they tended to get lighter in colour the longer that they were used. At one stage, white jackets were used.

It was not until during World War 1 that the colour of the jacket began to standardize to camouflage colours such as earth-brown, khaki and grey-green.

At that time the French infantry still wore coloured uniforms and had suffered heavy casualties. They changed to a “horizon blue” (very light grey-blue) colour, which was an improvement even though it still had yellow metal buttons on it. Around 1930 they changed to khaki colouring.

Although the military jacket has had a varied past, by comparison, modern jackets are very dull. Most are black or a shade of brown and are styled similar to each other.

Gone are the turquoise and yellow jackets, which is probably a good thing for the continued well-being of the wearer in combat.