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.

Of course, some parts of the world required thicker jackets than others due to their naturally colder or harsher weather, but these jackets were still relatively simple garments.

With the introduction of the horse-less carriage, the increased speed of the vehicles (after getting rid of the man who had to walk in front holding a red flag to warn other road users) meant that warmer jackets were required which led to further development.

From there it was a short leap into aircraft use - what worked in the automobile would surely work in the aircraft. So it proved to be. However, in this case, further development of the leather jacket took it into what became known as the flying jacket or flight jacket.

Aircraft development resulted in faster aircraft which became more sleekly designed. The cockpits were by now completely enclosed and the emphasis became not so much one of warmth and protection from the elements, but rather more one of comfort and ensuring that loose clothing did not impede any of the flight controls or instruments in the now rather confined cockpits.

This requirement led to the introduction of a one-piece suit, now known officially as a flying suit but also having some rather unofficial names such as a "zoom-bag".

Coupled with the development of the flight suit came the "g-suit". This is basically a suit with air tubes built into it, especially in the leg and stomach areas. It had been known for a while that the high gravitational forces caused by some aircraft maneuvers could cause a pilot to lose consciousness - to black out. This was found to be caused by a lack of blood to the brain caused by those high-g forces which drained the blood down into the lower parts of the body. Designing a system that detected these forces and inflated the tubes at the appropriate times to literally squeeze the body, prevented or at least reduced that blood drain and reduced the instances of pilot black-out. Of course it also meant that pilots could now tolerate higher g-forces than previously!

Even though there are highly technical (and expensive) flight suits available, a basic one-piece suit made of cotton or some other non-inflammable material will meet the requirements of most recreational pilots.

When humanity got itself "organized" into armies, the need to be able to tell "your" side from the "other" side was swiftly recognised. Fortunately most of the identification problems had already been solved with the continued use of different clothing.

As the army uniforms evolved, so did the jacket which has always formed an integral part of military clothing. Like so many other forms of clothing, it evolved into different forms which themselves kept changing.

Even the materials changed. From jackets initially made of animal hides, there arose vastly different materials. In the case of the knights of European history, jackets made of metal, such as linked chains became part of their military clothing. While very useful at deflecting spears and arrows, they were also very heavy. As the knights generally had a horse on which to get around, this was not too great a problem - until they no longer had a horse under them.

During the American Civil War, the uniforms often depended on what materials were available locally.

Some of the army jackets from around 200 years ago seemed to concentrate more on fashion than the realism of war. When the camouflage style of the modern army jacket is considered, the sight of the scarlet jackets of some of the infantry units of those days is almost unbelievable. But that was the style of some of the military units of those times. Those jackets also appear to have hindered the wearer's movements.

Over the last 100 years or so there has been a greater emphasis on the mobility of the wearer and this has been reflected in the design and materials used. In quite a few cases the materials were not necessarily the most appropriate, but like all military organisations, nothing is perfect. In fact, sometimes the people responsible for making such decisions do not seem to ever be able to get it right! Normally they do not have to wear the garment either.

These days the average army jacket (apart from those designed for parades and formal occasions) tend to be reasonably comfortable to wear, enable the wearer to move around fairly easily and blend in with the surroundings. No more scarlet tunics out in the bush!

However, it is generally believed that it was the Shearling B-3 jacket that was probably the original bomber jacket.

Today there are many companies producing different versions of the Shearling B-3 jacket.

For those people wishing to buy one, a choice needs to be made as usual based on the final use for the jacket.