GUEST: I brought in, uh, what I believe to be a World War II bomber jacket.
APPRAISER: Do you have any idea who might have worn it?
GUEST: Yes, a gentleman, and I bought his house. And, uh, this was in it.
APPRAISER: Do you know what unit he was in?
GUEST: Uh, the 390th. I know that he, uh... The unit caught some flak, and so I have a bit of the parachute. I know he was in the, in the, um, hospital for his shoulder, 'cause he had some shrapnel and, and flak. But that's all I know.
APPRAISER: Where, where was he flying over?
GUEST: He was dropping bombs in Germany.
APPRAISER: So, what you have here is a World War II Army Air Corps A-2 flight jacket. Would have been worn by individual fighter pilots, um, and also, uh, some bomb crews wore the jacket. It was made by, by Cable Raincoat Company, and the contract date specifies that it was made in 1942. They also made them out of goat skin and horse hide. But this one is made out of the horse hide, not the goat. So, here we have the, uh, 390th Bomb Group patch on the left, uh, front. And, as we spin it around, we can see the insignia from his plane, "Prowlin' Tom," with a wonderfully painted cat on the back. It looks like he's coming out of a cloud. And then all the bombs on the bottom for their bombing missions. And there are 26 missions, or 26 bombs painted on the bottom of the jacket. Now, one of the things I do have to comment on is the condition.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: You can see the damage up here on the shoulders from it being on a coat hanger for so long. And it, it can't be on a hanger anymore. It needs to go in an acid-free box, uh, with some acid-free paper, and kept flat. The paint on it is fantastic. The paint is where the value is. And we talked about this at, at the table for a little bit, and we figured that the auction value for this would be between $6,000 and $9,000.
GUEST: No!
APPRAISER: Yeah.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: It's a really nice jacket.
GUEST: Wow, that's wonderful.
APPRAISER: Yeah.
