They get about 10 painted A-2 jackets a year and another 10 with patches. They sell quickly!
they had 115 that they've sold, and that proves that there is a steady and constant supply you can count on
https://www.ima-usa.com/pages/search-results?q=a-2%20jacket&page_num=2
https://www.facebook.com/militaryantiques
https://www.facebook.com/militaryantiques
These are just simply unbelievable! Wow! After watching Top Gun 2, I started to feel the same desire to have a replica of Maverick's jacket as I felt when I was 14 in 1986. But quickly realized that I am old and fat now, so I would look like a fool in one. And still can't afford the real thing as I could not when I was 14... 8-)
ReplyDeleteI joined the Navy 2 days after graduating high school, in 1989, and in 1991 we pulled into Seattle, and I happened to be walking downtown, passed a store with a Top Gun bomber jacket in the window, and dang it, I bought it. Still have it 32 years later, and can tell you that it has been gently used, but has proven to be made very well, and is wonderfully durable.
DeleteWhile crewing on my first sub, I (ahem, obtained shall we say) one of the few "foul weather" jackets that remained from the original issue. This was about 7 or 8 years after it had been commissioned. After about a year or two, the Navy sent a new kind of jacket, made of nylon or something similar.
Anyway, after I got out of the Navy with 10 years in, I had a good collection of patches from the subs, commands, places, schools, etc that I sewed onto that real Navy sub jacket, and now I've got what I must presume is the only submariner patch jacket in the style of the top gun fighter pilot. It's got 2 badge patches from the 2 commands I was at when an MP, a couple from Hong Kong, a couple from Persian Gulf missions, a pair from the two subs I crewed on, a couple from police department in Washington that traded patches with me, it's a very common for military and police and anyone that works someplace that has patches, to trade with everyone else in places they travel to, same thing goes for ballcaps. Since I was first on the USS Olympia, named for the city that is the capitol of Washington, the police dept from the city came down for tours, and they wanted to trade, so I have a "Olympia Police Dept" patch on one shoulder, and sheriffs dept from that county on the other. I thought it was a hoot that while crew on the Olympia, I had a patch saying I was in the police dept of Olympia.
It's been 30 years or so later, and I still wear it any morning it's colder than 45.