^Lot 50 WWII Aviation: Flying Tigers‘Hump’ Flight Jacket

Incredibly rare and original Flying Tigers ‘Hump’ A-2 pilot’s jacket. Brown goatskin leather jacket bears a manufacturer’s label inside of collar and reads, “Type A-2, Drawing No.30-1415…Cable Raincoat Co. Property Air Force, U.S. Army,” and has knit cuffs and waistband. Left breast bears a set of painted pilot’s wings, and 20 tiny mountains or ‘humps,’ as the pilots referred to them which signify the number of missions flown over the Himalaya. Reverse of the jacket bears a 9.5 x 6.75 red, white, and blue Indian-made American ‘escape’ flag as well as a 6.25 x 4.5 leather blood chit, with translations in Thai and Chinese. In very good condition, with expected age wear, light crazing, discoloration and distress to leather, one stripe from flag on the back partially separated, scattered soiling and crazing to leather patches, and some small pulls and holes to cuffs and waistband. Accompanied by a colorful embroidered 43? long silk pilot scarf from the CBI, as well as several other items, including: a non-working flip-top lighter, with relief engravings of an elephant and several deities; a printed pamphlet entitled ‘Our Chinese Ally’; a newspaper page from the August 15, 1945, San Francisco Chronicle showing the celebration in the streets; and a couple of other booklets. ‘Hump’ pilots were perhaps even more skilled than fighter pilots, as any flight in heavily laden aircraft over the mountain range required an exceptional skill set. Very difficult to find in their original untampered form.