Good Wear Leather Coat Company — Sale Bogen & Tenenbaum AN-6552 Flight Jacket

Bogen & Tenenbaum AN-6552 Flight Jacket
Price: $800.00 (used condition) — note shipping costs below
Fit: this pattern is slender in the correct size
Leather: superb chrome tanned seal brown goatskin
Mouton: original brown mouton
Knits: original with a few small holes and darning
Zipper: original No.5 blackened brass Conmar zipper, which operates fine. The pin has a small separation from the tape at the bottom, but it still operates as it should.
Size: 42

This is an excellent example of an original Bogen & Tenenbaum AN-6552 Navy flight jacket. Made in 1943, the jacket is still in wonderful condition, with some signs of wear and age. The jacket is rather snug overall, with dense but comfortable goatskin.

The goatskin is dense and solid, and very close to the flexibility it would have been when new. It's not dried out or stiff, but it is a heavy goatskin. The finish is beautiful and typical of WWII dyed leather, not pigmented or paint. A gloss finish is applied over the dye. There are a few areas with broken or missing stitches, but nothing that would affect the integrity of the jacket if one were to wear it. Nylon thread is extremely strong, no matter how old it is. Note that the thread is a reddish color, not dark brown.

The jacket had two different name tags applied at some point, and that's all the stitch holes that it has. No patches were applied. The jacket came with a name tag in the interior pocket, but we don't have any connection between the tag and the jacket, and the tag has no stitch holes in it. We did searches for H W Carter, and didn't find any good leads on who that person is, but the bag is a WWII era original.

The lining has a few holes in it, but is still wonderful and solid. It's a pale salmon color, very common for Bogen. Some originals, including one we owned years ago, have brown linings. The knits have a few holes and some darning, and we believe they should be kept in place. One cuff has a small hole on the edge, but it's really not any detraction to the jacket. Bogen, Arnoff, and Ostermann were the three companies during WWII known for using folded single-ply waistbands, rather than rib-rack waistbands. These are easier to install, and we think that may be why they were used, but we really don't know. After these contracts, no other makers use A-2 style waistbands like this again until late in the Vietnam war, another time it would have helped in using easier construction. If you've ever installed a rib-rack waistband, you'll know what we're talking about.

The Conmar zipper is perfectly fine in operation, but the metal insertion pin suffered ripped cotton tape at the very bottom of the zipper. This has no ill effect in the use of the zipper, and it's lasted 80+ years. We seriously doubt that careful use of the jacket would lead to any issues with the zipper. We applied zipper wax, which is what you see on the pin in the photograph. Conmar zippers can be somewhat tight so we like applying a little wax to smoothen the zipper action. This zipper is easy to connect, start, zip, and open.

The mouton is aged but just fine, too. Bogen was one of the early adherents to using a much easier rounded collar point. This is both easier for the sewers, and also kinder to the mouton leather. Having a strongly pointed collar leads to mouton leather having trouble if one is not careful, but a rounded collar point is so much easier to build and on the pressure the leather experiences when flipped to right side out.

The jacket fits typical of a size 40 Long in WWII Navy jackets. It would ideally fit someone in the range of 5'10" to 6' with a chest of 40-41.5", and a weight of about 165-180 pounds. The wearer is 6' and 178 pounds, with a 41.5" chest.