Named and Painted B-10 Flight Jacket and B-4 Flight Bag

An absolutely exceptional Army Air Force group comprised of a named and painted cotton B-10 flight jacket in size 40, together with the same aviator’s painted B-4 flight bag. Both the jacket and bag belonged to Technical Sergeant Russell Burnett, who served as the Flight Engineer on the B-24 bomber “Cocktail Hour” of the 64th Bomb Squadron in the famed 43rd Bomb Group, a unit that was known throughout the Army Air Force as “Ken’s Men”.

The B-10 jacket is in superb condition, with only a few small holes on the front of the knit waistband. These actually look like something that might have been caused by wearing a web belt that caught on the material. The jacket is in fact extremely clean, with the wool pile lining and mouton fur collar being completely intact. The Army Air Force stencil remains complete on the left shoulder, and the interior tag, providing the size of 40, is still present. The front of the jacket has large painted insignia for both the 5th Air Force and the first style patch of the 64th Bomb Squadron, which depicts an Indian with a tomahawk doing a war dance on a descending bomb. On the upper left breast is a leather name tag, impressed “Russ Burnett”. The entire upper back of the jacket is taken up with a superbly painted multi-color image of a B-24 Liberator. The B-24 on the back of the jacket carries the number “428” on its tail, while the nose of the plane has a very small painting on it of the Indian insignia of the 64th Squadron, as well as the names “Jane” and “Cheryl”. The soldier who painted the work that appears on this jacket was a singularly talented artist, creating shadowing on the plane with two colors of paint and even rendering the squadron insignia in miniature on the nose of the plane. Much of the nose art in the 43rd Bomb Squadron was created by the legendary Staff Sergeant Sarkis Bartigan, raising the possibility that this jacket may have been an example of Bartigan’s work on a smaller scale. In fact, the B-24 that carried tail number 428 in the 64th squadron was named “Cocktail Hour” and carried an amazing (and very risque) example of nose art that was done by Sergeant Bartigan himself. The B-24 that is on this jacket not only has the number “428” of “Cocktail Hour” on it’s tail, but it has the same diagonal black line on the tail and the red and white tail rudder as were carried by “Cocktail Hour”. The artwork on the nose of the plane on the jacket is not that of “Cocktail Hour”, but is instead the Indian squadron insignia with the names “Jane” and “Cheryl” added to it. However, “Jane” was the name of the wife of Russel Burnett, who owned this jacket, and “Cheryl” was his infant daughter. It is probable that Burnett had the jacket painted to substitute the very racy nose art of “Cocktail Hour” with the squadron insignia and the names of his wife and daughter, these modifications making the jacket much more acceptable to be worn in the company of his young family when he got home.

The Type B-4 flight bag has the same 5th Air force insignia and first style squadron insignia painted on the top of the bag as appear on the front of the jacket. On one side of the bag is stenciled Burnett’s name and service number while the other side bears the painted designation “Ken’s Men 43rd Bomb Group”. The flight bag, like the jacket, is in excellent used condition.