All right, so this is actually one of our first interviews, Jen, that we've done in quite some time.

And we're excited because we have the podcast studio set up.

And so we actually had someone reach out to us.

He said he found us on Instagram.

Found you on Instagram.

And this is John Slemp.

He's actually a photographer who made the kind of like a photography coffee table type book, but it's a lot more than that.

And you'll hear about that in our interview with him.

But he made this book called the Bomber Boys in the World War II.

I have flight jackets, World War II flight jackets.

So it's Bomber Boys, but it's the World War II, the history of the World War II flight jacket.

And since he's a photographer, the book is a awesome coffee table book of the beautiful photographs of painted bomber jackets, military jackets, the leather jacket painted from World War II.

So we talked to John all about how he got into this, his time serving, because he's a veteran himself, and how he went from serving in the army for 11 years with his father, who was a Green Beret, getting into photography, working in the professional space, and then starting this passion project that is this Bomber Boys book.

And it's just beautiful.

And we don't have it with us here.

It's actually sitting in the post office.

We just missed the cutoff, the closure time.

And so we're going to get it in a couple days.

We'll open it up for you guys.

But I hope you guys enjoy our interview with John Slimp on his book the Bomber Boys.

And stand by for one of the most famous bomber pilots of all time and his access to that.

Welcome to Talk with History.

I'm your host, Scott, here with my wife and historian, Jen.

Hello.

On this podcast, we give you insights to our history Inspired World Travels YouTube channel Journey and examine history through deeper conversations with the curious, the explorers and the history lovers out there.

We're here with John Slump, if I'm pronouncing that correctly.

Slump.

Slump.

Yes.

And so, John, you reached out because you relatively recently kind of finished up a book.

And I'd like you to kind of tell you how you got into this and a little bit of your photography background for our listeners who aren't familiar with.

Might not be familiar with your work or just kind of tell us a little bit about the book the Bomber Jacket Boys and how this, this kind of came to be.

Because it is.

I was looking at it on the website.

It is a beautiful, beautiful book.

Thank you.

So I was in the military for almost 11 years, but I.

I should say that I had 13 years prior service as a kid.

Oh, yeah.

But my.

My dad was a Green beret and spent 22 years before he retired.

So I picked up photography as a hobby while I was stationed in Germany.

Okay.

And one thing led to another when I got out, one of my friends suggested I try it for a living.

And I'm like, okay.

I had no clue how to enter the commercial world, and I found a school here in Atlanta and went there to learn advertising photography.

And then I assisted established photographers for several years and went out on my own, technically, in 96, I believe.

So what is that, 28 years now?

Yeah.

Somewhere in there, then I've been shooting commercially.

And in 2007, I think I decided to start specializing in aviation.

Probably the worst time in history to do that when the recession hit, but, you know, because aviation took it really hard on the nose and.

But I survived, and here we are.

And answer your question about the jackets.

I had always known about them for a long time, but I had never seen one.

And I belong to the Experimental Aircraft association here in Lawrenceville, just north of Atlanta.

And I asked around in the chapter, if anybody had one, I'd like to see it.

Sure enough, somebody had their uncle's jacket, and they brought it in, and I photographed it, and it was gorgeous.

It had 50 bombs on the front.

The fella had been a top turret gunner in a B24 unit in the Mediterranean.

And.

And it had the scantily clad female on the back.

I saw a picture of that one.

On the website, and, you know, it was a gorgeous jacket.

And I'm thinking to myself, boy, if they're all like this, this is going to be lovely.

You know, just really a fun visual treat.

And, you know, and at the time, I really didn't have any preconceived notions as to where the work might go, maybe an exhibition.

There was no thought at all of doing a book.

And I thought to myself, If I get 50 jackets, you know, that would be great.

And just for grins, I sent those two pictures to Dorothy Cochran, who's a curator at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

Oh, cool.

I had met her through one of my clients, and 58 minutes later I checked.

I got a separate email from Dr.

Alex Spencer, who's their curator of the aviation clothing collection, and he said, we have 15 jackets that'll work for your project.

When can you be here?

Oh, my gosh, that's so cool.

I was stunned Elated, surprised, et cetera.

And a few months later, I went up there, and we photographed 13 jackets at the Udvar Hazy center, which is a subset of the museum out in Chantilly, Virginia.

Yeah, we've been there.

We saw the Enola Gay there.

Yeah, it's.

It's quite the place.

And so at that point, it.

It sort of took a life of its own.

Took on a life of its own.

And once I, you know, once my friends started getting the word out, so to speak, in the aviation community, I had people calling me out of the blue, hey, I've got a jacket.

Would you like to shoot it?

Sure.

Tell me more about it, etc.

And I had people sending me jackets from California.

I had a granddaughter and a niece drive from Iowa to bring me a jacket here in Atlanta.

They said.

They said they had other business here in town.

I'm not so sure.

But it.

It really just snowballed.

And when I contacted other museums, began contacting other museums, and I mentioned that I had photographed jackets at the Smithsonian, it was like, open sesame.

Yeah, just.

Okay, you must be somebody.

Come on down.

That's cool.

So what about kind of going a little bit back to the start of this?

What about the jacket itself kind of embodies that.

That spirit of.

Of aviation, because I feel like it's.

It's such a.

An icon of aviation.

What, to you, does the jacket kind of symbolize when it comes to that world?

Well, it is an.

It's an iconic garment.

It's an iconic American garment.

You know, the Germans had leather jackets, their pilots, but they had zippers across the side, you know, diagonally.

And they weren't painted as, if I'm correct in that.

Not like ours, anyway.

And, you know, it was part military folk art.

It was part swagger and cachet, shall we say?

I'm an aviator and you're not type thing.

Yeah, I have mine right here.

Yeah, I'm sure.

Yeah.

And, you know, it.

Initially, I was just interested in the artwork because as I've seen pictures, I don't think I've ever seen two of the same design.

And so there was partially an exploration of the artwork, but as I got into it, my friends suggested that I start capturing the stories of the guys who owned the jackets.

And.

And really, the jackets became an appropriate way to tell their story.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

And.

Yeah.

And so I did a few audio interviews, and I had a friend go with me who did three or four video interviews.

I wish I had been able to do more, but that's what we got.

And it, you know, hearing it from the veterans themselves, I was fortunate enough to photograph over 25 World War II veterans and 16 women Air Force service pilots.

That's so cool.

And they were, they.

They were quite a.

Quite a hoot, too, I gotta tell you.

And 16 original Rosies.

Rosie the Riveters, Wow.

Although they're not in the book, but they also are quite interesting.

And so basically, I started accumulating this information, and that's when, you know, the light bulb went off, and perhaps there's a bulk here.

So, like you said, these jackets are unique, but does everyone in the air crew get one?

Is it like the pilots get one and everyone in the crew gets one?

And at the time, there really are, you know, utilized because it's so cold in the cockpit that you're wearing your leather jacket to keep you warm.

Now we get them more symbolically because that's what pilots get when you get your wings, not because we actually need them.

I think I wore it one time flying over the Rockies in training because I was cold and I threw it on.

But.

But these people actually use these jackets.

So when they came home, did they have them painted when they came back, or did they wear them painted like that while they were serving?

Well, we have several questions here.

So most were painted in theater.

Okay.

But not always by fellow crewmen or artists on the base.

Sometimes they were farmed out.

And as you know, all these ancillary businesses spring up around bases.

And so sometimes the six pack of beer, carton of cigarettes.

Thank you very much.

Paint my jacket.

And, you know, so that.

That's how that happened a lot of times.

Although at the time a fair number of sign painters were drafted into the service, sign painting was still a profession.

And so once people found out they had artistic talent, like, oh, here, paint my jacket, or paint the nose art, et cetera.

And one thing I should remind you of, they were work jackets, utility jackets, but they generally weren't warm on missions because at 30,000ft, they just didn't add any additional warmth.

Okay.

And he said, well, generally, if a crew didn't come back, the jacket was usually one of the first things liberated from a guy's foot locker, such as life in the military.

Sure.

And, you know, and as an aside, when the crews didn't come back, I'm sure it was a supply sergeant cleared everything out of the hooch probably as quickly as possible, not only for sentimental and morale reasons, but I'm also sure so they could get new people in.

So that was a reality at the time.

Are there any.

Are there any kind of stories attached to any.

Any of the jackets that you photograph that kind of stand out to you, like, more kind of specifically about the jacket, whether it's the veteran that.

That owned it or the jacket itself kind of having its own story.

How much time do you have?

We.

We have plenty of time.

I can edit all sorts of stuff afterwards.

Yeah, sure.

Let's see.

I'm trying to remember Jan's question.

Yeah.

Does everybody get a jacket?

Yes.

So at the time, the jackets came into the U.S.

army inventory in 1931.

Okay.

So they weren't new to World War II, but as I understand it, they were initially only issued to officers in the air crew.

Okay.

And then as the war came on, everybody in the air crew got one.

Okay, so does that answer your question?

Yeah, because I don't think nowadays, I think it's just the officers who get them.

I think it's just the pilots and the naval flight officers, the NFOs, who get them.

Again, symbolically.

So.

But I.

But I noticed the jackets you had were worn by, like, you said, turret gunners and things like that.

So those people accrue, so they're owning the jackets as well.

So like you said, I think During World War II, everyone's issued the jacket part of the air crew.

It's a symbol that you're part of the crew.

You're all together.

Yeah.

I would assume that your most valuable jacket, like, I know you had a appraiser from Antiques Roadshow, which I love did a part of, and I would assume value to these jackets, the most valuable one would be the better story.

The more the person who was a part of an aircraft that had a story or was popularized, what one is your most valuable jacket or your most expensive jacket?

You know, people now assume I'm a jacket expert, which I'm not.

But I had a friend, Ken Johnson in California, who is a pilot, and she had designed a bracelet using a WASP theme.

And because of that, she had a local jeweler making them.

Well, somehow they had a jacket, not a family member's, and she wanted to bring it to me at Oshkosh so I could photograph it.

And they initially said no, and then I suppose she kept after them, and they said, well, okay, but let's get into praise.

So we know how much it's worth.

$8,000.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

And it was a gorgeous jacket.

It had lovely artwork on it.

It was in great shape.

And she brought it to Oshkosh and I photographed it there in a garage of a house that we rent while we stayed there.

And so it's in the book.

Yes.

So what adds to the value of that jacket is the artwork?

Well, also, so in corresponding with Jeff Schrader, the Antiques Roadshow appraiser, he has a company called Advanced Guard Militaria.

It's in Missouri, near St.

Louis.

And anyway, he basically mentioned in his write up that if the jacket had good artwork and good provenance, it could really fetch a lot of money.

And I learned during the course of the project that apparently the Japanese became very enamored with the jackets in the 80s and 90s.

Oh, interesting.

Paying upwards of $20,000 for a jacket with good provenance and good artwork.

How interesting.

So I found that kind of fascinating and I'm trying to figure out how to break into that market.

I sold five books recently to the real McCoys and they make replica jackets in Japan.

And I just found another Chinese company just today, this morning that makes replica jackets.

Anyway, the most popular ones are like, do you would think it'd be like the Memphis Belle or the Enola Gay?

Like, do people want these famous bombers?

Well, some of the artwork is actually famous.

As to particular aircraft, I think it's generally personal preference.

Some people have attachment to a specific bomb group or squadron even, or a particular theater.

The book is broken down by theater, by the way.

Okay, So I have 8th Air Force, the Mediterranean and North Africa, and then China, Burma, India and the Pacific.

And which, which do you have the most of?

The.

The 8th Air Force, for sure.

The, the Eastern front.

Yeah, there's 104 jackets in the book.

And if I remember correctly, 64 hates Air Force jackets.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

And then I saw that you also kind of started as you kind of progressed through your.

I think you said it was like an eight year journey.

I watched one of the videos on your, your YouTube channel.

Correct.

That you started photographing other kind of military memorabilia.

Can you talk about a couple of the other things that you started photographing?

Sure.

I went up to Asheville, North Carolina and at one point I had a handheld recorder.

I asked him individually, tell me a story.

One of the guys had been forced down on his second mission, I believe is a B17CO pilot in Southern Germany.

Their plane was all shot up, nobody was hurt, but it just wouldn't stay in the air.

Even after they dumped out their machine guns and everything that wasn't bolted down, it just wouldn't fly.

So they landed in a farmer's field the farmer was in the field, and they were.

They didn't even have sidearms, and so they had thrown those out.

Oh, my gosh.

And so they were captured pretty much immediately.

And as they were being transported to the POW camp, they're standing on the train platform at the Bonhoeff German train station, and the locals saw who they were and got agitated and basically in their face and wanted to do bodily harm.

And the German guards, the German military, Wehrmacht, said, this is not happening.

You need to go away.

So they did for a time, and then they came back even more vocal and wish I could remember his name off the top of my head.

He told me that the German guards turned their backs to the Americans and lowered their weapons at the Germans and said, you need to go away.

You are not going to harm these prisoners.

Wow.

And he said that totally changed his opinion of the German soldiers.

And he had brought along his German POW dog tags, which I had never seen, but they were apparently a square with serrations down the middle so it could be broken in half.

And I photographed that.

He's got that in his hands.

That's a cool story.

I've never heard a story like that before.

You know, they depicted something like that in Masters of the Air, something like that, because so many of these aviators were captured and sent to POW camps, and there was different levels of protection they were given by the Germans.

And of course, there was always this high emotion of the German people because they had been bombing areas and people were dying.

And so there was different how much the Germans would protect them and put them in the cams.

I think there was a lot of respect at the, you know, respect as POWs, as aviators, especially towards the beginning of the war where, you know, we were capturing the Germans, we were putting them in POW camps, and then they were doing the same.

So it was kind of like a retaliatory thing that eventually there would be a prisoner exchange or something along that nature.

Yeah, I think it was probably more practical than that, Jim, to be honest with you.

It was very much, hey, we've got your guys, you got our guys.

We may swap at some point.

And Hitler actually wanted to use them as bargaining chips to negotiate a truce instead of a surrender, which is why near the end of the war, when the Russians got close to some of these camps, the Germans basically forced the prisoners out of the camp, marching them eastward so they wouldn't be captured in the dead of winter.

And some guys died, and it was not a good thing.

So let's get back.

Oh, sorry.

No, I was going to say.

So sometimes the locals did get a hold of the guys and beat them up or killed them.

And that's depicted, I think, in Masters of the Air.

Near the end, I actually had a German military historian contact me.

Oh, wow.

Who?

She wanted to use one of the jackets in an exhibition that she was putting together on a unit from the Mediterranean theater that bombed in Munich, I believe, in July of 44.

And this one squadron of 12 planes, nine of them were shot down on this mission.

And some of the guys were captured by the Wehrmacht and treated according to the Geneva Convention.

Some of them were captured by locals and murdered.

So, you know, you really wanted to be captured by soldiers if you had to be captured.

Interesting.

And of course, you know, as you said, I've just bombed these guys and all of my plane is shot down.

I've come down right in the middle of them.

So obviously there's a hornet's nest.

And if you survived, sometimes it was by a stroke of luck.

So those stories you captured, those stories, you took fantastic portraits of these men.

And so I think the capturing of the stories of these veterans, since we're losing more and more World War II veterans every day, is so important.

Are you gonna make another book about that?

What are you doing with these stories?

Are they in an archive somewhere?

Did you give them to or do you have them still in your personal archive?

Well, yes and yes.

Each museum.

So there were 12 museums that participated.

I wound up shooting 162 jackets across the country.

Oh, wow.

And I photographed several more since then.

But each museum that participated, I gave them high res jpegs of all the files for their use.

And some have used them pretty well, some not at all, which I can't quite figure out why.

But the 390th Memorial Museum in Tucson has done a really good job with them.

And they've even created a fundraising campaign where they used the jackets as incentive.

It was adopted jacket.

Oh, cool.

And they used that to raise money for new display cases.

Yeah, that's smart.

Which they did.

Yeah.

And they rotate their jackets fairly frequently.

I think they have 33, if I remember correctly, is what I photographed there.

That's so great.

So you really preserved history.

You really did, you know, you found it, you preserved it.

When it comes to the paint on these jackets, like what kind of paint is used for this?

Because I, I can't imagine wearing a painted jacket everyday use.

And the paint's not going to come off and deteriorate.

Like, how does that work?

Exactly.

Some, some of them are flaking off and have flaked off.

Generally at the time it was lead based paint and sometimes they even used aircraft paint because that's what they had on head.

Sure.

Pastels, if I remember correctly, didn't come into existence till the mid-50s.

So, you know, is essentially what was at hand.

And then what is the best way to store these jackets then?

To put, if you said the paint's already starting to flake, like, is it best, you know, temperature, climate controlled, you know, flat, you know, acid free paper in the dark, you know, is that the best way to preserve these?

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

I actually talked to a professional conservator and sent her a series of questions and we have an FAQ section in the book on how to take care of them.

And she said basically store them flat in an acid free box.

And she had a really good idea to take a long sleeve T shirt and sew up the ends of the sleeves and then stuff the sleeves with cotton or something non toxic and then slide that into the sleeves on the jacket.

Structured?

Yeah, correct.

And I did photograph the jackets with a little bit of bubble wrap in the chest area just to give it a little bit of dimension and volume so it wouldn't be just smashed, flabbed.

And so she said, put it in an acid free box, normal humidity, not too wet or too dry, no bugs, of course.

And you know, a lot of it's just common sense stuff.

You know, these garments are now 80 years plus old and some of them are in surprisingly good shape.

But some of the jackets I photographed at the 475th Fighter Group in Chino, California, which is just way East Los Angeles, is a dry climate and they didn't have them in any sort of climate control case.

So when I picked up those jackets and put them on the light box, they were literally flaking off in my hands.

Oh, no.

And that's the nature of these natural materials.

They are going to deteriorate at some point to dust.

So I feel like I have maybe preserved a little bit of history anyway and feel privileged to have done so, to be honest with you.

Sure.

Well, I think the photograph is a great representation of it.

And I think your exhibits, which I think would be fantastic to get in different areas, in different places, especially like, you know, Masters of the Air, like different places where people are going to see the photographs are so detailed that that in itself is a great way to see the artifact, to look at the artifact without actually having to display the artifact.

And you know, have it deteriorate even more.

The photographs are so great.

I think that is such a.

A wonderful way to share history and to show history.

Thank you.

Yes.

I.

I learned a lot shooting with these museums.

Most museums only display 3 to 5% of what they actually have.

There's just so much material, and.

And I like to call them America's closets, if you will.

Yeah.

You know, we don't want it in our closet, but we don't want to throw it away.

Sure.

So I think most museums do a really good job in that regard as best they can.

Most of them have limited funding and limited staff, and I actually had two or three turn me down because they didn't have staff to pull the jackets and have me come for a day to photograph them, which I understand it would have been nice to photograph more of them, and maybe we will still at some point.

But to my mind, having the access to the veterans and their jackets at the same time was priceless.

And now with so many of them gone, I'm not sure a second book would have the same cachet to buy, to be honest with you.

So what was your favorite?

What's your favorite one?

You have to have one.

Well, let's see here.

Actually, the one in the background here is one of my favorites.

Let me get the book here.

Okay.

So this is one of the jackets in the 390th Memorial Museum.

Okay.

Oh, how cool.

And just spectacular artwork.

Yeah.

That's beautiful.

And to my mind, if you had to visit one museum to see examples of these jackets, the 390th would be the place to go.

Yeah.

Because they do a good job of displaying them, and they have some with just spectacular artwork.

Now, I.

I saw one of the things that I saw on your YouTube channel when you were talking about this was that you actually had this printed and Made in America, which I.

I thought was.

Was pretty neat because I.

I think you said on your channel, you know, this is.

These are American stories.

So you wanted to have this Made in America.

What was that kind of printing process like?

Did you get to kind of go down and review the prints before everything started getting pushed out?

Yes.

Buried in the blog on the Bomber Boys website is a section where I did a little bit of video.

So to back up a little, the graphic designer who'd laid out the book, he and I had worked together on an advertising job in 2014.

And I didn't know it at the time, but he's actually a graphic designer by trade.

And so we kept in touch.

And I told him what I was doing, and he said, oh, I'd love to design the book for you, and I'll do it for free, because, you know, he was that interested in it.

Yeah.

And I said, well, thanks for that, but no, I'm not.

You're not going to do it for free for two reasons.

One, you're a pro.

You need to get paid.

Sure.

And two, I want it done in this lifetime.

Exactly.

No weekends and holidays and all that.

Yep.

Smart.

So in 2022, in January, I shot the last set of pictures at the National Museum of the US Air Force in Daytona, including Jimmy's Doris jacket.

That's probably one of my favorite jackets.

That's, like, her favorite.

Yes.

We did his hometown.

Did you see our video from his hometown?

I stood on his porch.

Yes.

And actually, I put an Instagram post up, I think, up in December with part of his jacket's photograph.

And the lady who runs the museum, she contacted me, and they may buy a print of his jacket.

Oh, cool.

That would be great, because they don't have anything.

Yes.

And so anyway, so Darren said, yes, I'll design the book.

And after I got the pictures together that spring of 2022, I sent him all the information, and I wrote the text, generally speaking, of the book, except for a couple of sections.

And he basically took three months laying it out.

398 pages.

It's a big book.

Wow.

And 12 by 12 inches in size.

Six pounds.

Anyway, so after I got it back, we made just a few stylistic changes.

He's really a wonderful, wonderful designer.

And I sent it to a proofreader, professional proofreader.

She took a couple of months massaging it and made over 1500 changes to the text.

And I said, jill, I thought I was pretty good with the English language.

English language.

And she said, you are.

And I'm like, well, you could have surprised me.

And a lot of it was punctuation that I had long forgotten since high school.

Sure.

And some stylistic changes and that sort of thing.

So we got that done, and in late summer, we sent it to the Predator in Houston.

This is a printer that Darren's worked with for 20 years.

I didn't want to send it to China.

Sure.

It's such an American thing.

I didn't want to.

Stuck on a boat for four months, you know, And I.

I didn't even entertain the thought of printing it elsewhere.

You know, I probably could have printed it for half of what it cost here, but I just wasn't interested in doing It.

That's.

That's.

That's awesome.

I mean, I love the fact that it's, you know, American stories, you know, you know, American men and American made.

So.

So I love the fact that, that you did that.

And for.

For our listeners, we're going to, you know, put some spots in the show notes and your website and everything like that, because this is just.

It's one of those things that I think every history lover, especially World War II history fans, is going to love.

Well, I think it's so principle too.

What you did.

Right.

And it's a great representation of what they did is to honor them is to not have, you know, like not.

Not try to make it any less than what it should be.

I think it's great that you had it made in America.

I think that's really speaks volumes to thank you, you as a creator.

You know, I having.

I was born in Japan, you know, when my dad was stationed and we lived on Okinawa for four years and I was stationed in Germany almost five years.

So I guess I've been around a little bit, you know, but America's a pretty great place in a lot of ways.

And so I guess I wanted to showcase a little bit of that too.

You know, we still have the ways and means to get things done at a very high level.

Yeah.

With taste and style.

So let me ask you a question.

I have two questions for you.

So one, your favorite jacket with all the bombs on there, I assume those are all the bombs that were dropped by that particular crewman.

They represent missions.

Missions, missions flown.

So was that made after they were done or were those added as they were flying?

I think both.

Okay.

I haven't been able to definitely discern that, but from what I could tell, having seen a few pictures of guys actually painting them in theater, it looked like they were painted as the missions accumulated.

And I know one instance, one of the jackets I photographed was painted here in the States when the guy got back.

Okay.

Okay.

Oh, sorry.

You know, it's a mixture, I think.

Sure.

And then Jimmy Stewart's jacket.

What is it painted?

Is it not painted?

What's on there?

Okay, there's his bomb unit patch his quadrant, I believe.

Let me see if I can find it here real quick.

And, you know, I should have this page memorized.

I do have it sort of memorized.

So this is his jacket here.

So that's when he's a captain.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And you can see he rode in there.

Lieutenant Jimmy Stewart.

So it's before he.

So yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

When he first issued the jacket 102, you know, and I think a lot of people aren't aware, but he joined the army as a private in early 1941, before the war started.

Yep.

Apparently he had quite a history of military service in his family.

He does, yes.

And he was already an Academy Award winner, already a pilot, and.

But he was 32 or 3, you know, so he was not a young man.

But I forget if there was a waiver involved or what, but he became an officer, and then he went through the regular flight training and so on, and they didn't actually want to send him to combat because they were afraid he'd get shot down.

And so he was at a training base in Montana, I think, for almost two years.

And finally they were forming a new bomb group, being sent to England, and he finagled away into that staff.

I believe it was the xo.

And two weeks later, they made him the commander.

Wow.

Wow.

And then she can be like, I'm going to fly.

I'm doing that mission.

I'm doing that mission.

Yeah.

So if I remember correctly, he wound up flying 20 missions as a B24 pilot.

Jeez.

And.

And did suffer PTSD after the war.

Yeah.

That's why It's a Wonderful Life is my favorite movie of all time.

So, specifically on my jacket.

So I.

I mean, this is just a G1.

I think it's a Navy jacket.

Right.

With the color.

Yep.

It's a G1.

I specifically didn't put my rank.

That's when I got it, because I knew that I got it as an ensign.

I knew I was right.

And so I just put my name right in US Navy, because I.

I was.

I knew that that way I wasn't replacing patches and replacing things over and over again.

And then I just put the flag on and I did the blood chit, which I see you have examples of some bloodshits in there.

So I put the blood chit for I flew over the Middle East.

So my bloodshed represents the languages of the Middle East.

That's cool.

But I was surprised to find out they were still using those.

Oh, yeah?

Yep.

But I find that so interesting that they could be so individualized.

There was no standardization of the leather jacket.

And what's interesting about that as well is you can wear it with your uniform, and it's not standardized.

From what I understand, they were not technically supposed to be wear worn off the base.

Ah, okay.

I think that was largely ignored, as was some of the more risque artwork on the jackets, you know, I think that's why some of them survived.

You know, I thought when I started that there would probably be a lot of that.

I think of the 162 that I shot, only two or three had what might be considered some risque artwork.

Sure.

And when you got back to the States in Littleville, usa, you didn't wear that down Main Street.

It just wasn't done.

Yep.

So that's why they survived.

Sure.

Absolutely.

And like you said, that's kind of what you did in theater.

It's what you did with your fellow crewmen.

Right.

Because that's the.

That was the morale builder for you guys.

Right.

And that's why it's scantily clad women, because that's the morale builder for you guys.

And we.

We do a whole episode on nose art.

We always say, as you got further away from officials.

Yeah.

Got more risk.

Yeah.

The more risky you got.

That's true.

The less brass you have coming onto your base and looking at everything.

And so, like you said, and when you get home, that's the first thing you pack away, because it.

Sometimes people would wear their dress uniforms.

But the same thing is true with the flight suit.

You're not really supposed to wear the flight suit off of the base.

Right.

And sometimes people do, but you're not really supposed to.

So it kind of falls in that same line of thinking.

Yes.

This is kind of like a working uniform.

This is what you kind of do to build morale with your crew.

You're out there for months, years at a time, and so whatever it takes to put a smile on your face and to help, you know, get back into the cockpit and feel brave, and it's another way to kind of put your resume out there as well.

People can see it.

So I think.

I think there's so much history in these jackets, but they're so.

There is unique.

Like, did you ever photograph two that were the same?

I did, quite by accident.

Oh, wow.

So in leave 2015, May or June, I photographed a jacket.

The son lives here in Dunawoody, just north of Atlanta.

He brought me his dad's jacket.

I photographed it, put it on my iPad, didn't think any more about it.

And I went to Oshkosh, the biggest air show in the country, a couple months.

A couple months later, and I was doing a job photographing several aircraft for an aircraft calendar.

And I was talking to one of the fellows who handles one of the aircraft, told him what I was doing, and he said, oh, my dad was a Was a bomber crewman.

He said the pilot's name was Walter Thomason.

Walter Thomason's jacket was the one I photographed here.

Oh, cool.

I didn't say a word.

I took out my iPad, went to that picture.

I said, this Walter Thomason.

He said, yeah.

We had goosebumps talking about it for five minutes.

And the following year, he brought me his dad's jacket, which he had, and I photographed it.

So there are two jackets from the same crew in the book.

Oh, that's incredible.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think that would happen.

And is that the only one you have that are from the same crew?

That's very cool.

And that's the thing about the military and just kind of history circles, and I think really military aviation and some of the history there is.

The circles are a little bit smaller than people realize.

There's a lot of folks that are out there that are interested in this stuff, but those circles, you know, those birds of a feather flock together, so they.

The circles overlap a lot.

And I love kind of those serendipitous moments like.

Like you experienced there, you know?

And that happened a fair amount during this project.

It was not anything that I planned or thought about, preconceived, and it just sort of, you know, happy accidents.

When I photographed jackets at the Air Force Museum, the first one we shot was Jimmy Stewart.

And literally right after we finished it, I had shot tethered to my laptop so we could see the pictures.

The collections manager, Roberta Carruthers, and her boss, Mr.

Tillotson, he ran a museum.

They both came out of the room, and I said, hi, and so on.

And Roberta and I got to talking, and she said, your request to shoot here actually did us a favor.

And I'm like, really?

How so?

She said it prompted us to get our hands on the jackets.

And some were in display cases, some were in storage, but they got to look at them to assess them for a condition.

Inventory, that sort of thing.

Yeah, inventory.

And she told me that this was only the second time since 1968 that Jimmy Stewart's jacket had been out of the display case.

Oh, my gosh.

Which means nobody else has.

Has this picture.

Yeah.

That's so cool.

And that's one of the reasons why it's not online.

Not the whole jacket.

Sure.

Yeah.

People have a tendency to.

To.

To lift images without thinking about it, where they come from and the effort involved.

But, you know, it just.

I'm driving down to sunning for one year, and I got a phone call myself.

And it was the fellow in Virginia beach who works at the Colonial Williamsburg Museum, and he had his uncle's jacket.

And it's quite a heartbreaking story, actually, but it's in the back of the book.

And I went up there, finally got up there and photographed the jacket and learned more about his uncle's history.

And just out of the blue, you know, he contacted me.

I would have never known about this otherwise.

That's so cool.

That's amazing.

I.

I love, I love those stories like that.

Especially like what Jen and I do with Walk with History, you know, is we're going around, excuse me.

To these locations and kind of trying to experience the.

The history, you know, where things happen and stuff like that.

And you got to do that through this whole process.

Right.

You were, you were sitting there holding something that was a part of history numerous, numerous times.

And then as you're doing that, you're bound to encounter stories like this.

That's just amazing.

Well, I think it's a testimony to what you do.

You're telling America's story for Americans, and they read it and they see it, they connect with it, and then you keep connecting the dots, and people find more of their story in the stories that you're telling.

They can see more of their past.

And that is what I think that's so tremendous.

It's like, still needs to be done, still needs to be uncovered, still needs to be told.

And so we really support what you're doing, and we think it's just fantastic.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

You know, as a commercial photographer, it's nice to be hired by a client to go out and shoot a jet in the cockpit, in the interior, whatever, you know, but it's not really soul fulfilling, so to speak.

And one of the pieces of advice that you hear from people who help photographers market their work and so on is to do a personal project.

And so I've always been interested in military history since I was a kid, especially having lived on Okinawa and, you know, walk, walk the ground, so to speak.

And so when this idea germinated, it.

It scratched that itch as well.

Yeah.

And I've been really fortunate to have stumbled into this because it satisfied so many things.

Personally, you know, I do have a military background.

You know, military history has been an interest, and I can combine my photographic skills with creating something that's bigger than myself.

Yeah, I feel like it was meant to be.

I mean, these photos needed to be professional photos.

They needed to be.

To see these jackets the way they are meant to be seen and observed for other people.

It needed a professional photographer to do it.

Need someone who understands the lighting and understands the background and understands the structure.

So you were.

I mean, I feel like you were meant to do this.

I really feel like it's fantastic.

And we're just so excited to be able to tell this story.

I love the name Bomber Boys.

It's so simple but so powerful.

Right?

I really love that.

Well, there's actually several other books with that title, Bomber Boys.

So the official title is Bomber boys, World War II flight jacket art, just to differentiate.

But I thought for search Google purposes, they would be good in that regard.

And on the website, I put WWII in front of Bomber Boys because I didn't want the FBI showing up on Sunday, you know, so that's why that was done.

But, yeah, it was a real privilege and I learned a tremendous amount.

Air crew.

Air.

You know, Air Corps history that I never knew about before.

Absolutely.

Now, you were army for 11 years.

What did you do in the Army?

I was an armor officer by trade.

Okay, very cool.

And you were stationed in Germany.

Anywhere else?

Almost five years at Fort Knox.

Oh, cool.

And my time in West Germany, I was in 1st Brigade at the 3rd Armored Division.

Okay, very cool.

Just towards the Frankfurt.

Yeah.

So through your.

Kind of.

For your own personal journey through this, I mean, kind of did your perspective on the war or on the veterans kind of change throughout this whole process?

Like, how did your perspective on things change from when you started off with that email 58 minutes later from, you know, the.

The curator, and then all of a sudden eight years.

Right.

And we're.

We're sitting here on a.

On a podcast interview, and you've been publishing this book for a little while now.

Like, what.

What about your perspective kind of changed over that journey?

You know, there was a fellow named Punchy Powell.

Bob Punchy Powell, who lived about six miles from me, who was a P51 pilot on D day.

Oh, wow.

And I photographed him in his basement.

And then later on for the book, or vice versa.

Anyway, he made it a point more than once of saying that he was no hero.

And while I agree with him to a point, what these guys did was pretty heroic.

And it's a subtle distinction, I know, but I think it takes a real commitment to climb into an aircraft with skin that's about as thick as a business card and take off into the blue, knowing you're going to get shot at by the Luftwaffe and ground artillery or Zeros or what have you, and to do it Again and again and again.

You know, that's.

The infantry guys didn't have to deal with it.

You know, they had medics in their company usually.

So if you got wounded, you could call for a medic and you might get patched up.

If you got wounded in the air, you know, God help you.

Yeah.

You know, there were more than one instances where a bandage was put on your blown off leg or arm and your buddies threw you out of the plane hoping that the people on the ground would take care of you, because that was really your only chance of survival.

But sometimes it was several hours back to the base, and at 30,000ft, no heat, more than one instance, the electrical system was shot out, so their electrically heated suits didn't work.

So these guys faced tremendous, tremendous hazards.

And it's just mind boggling that more of them didn't come back with severe ptsd.

I think what you do is so important because I find it surprising how many stories just haven't been told.

Oh, yeah.

And that's like, even with these jackets, how many of them were blocked away and put away?

And this was an avenue people saw to tell their stories, tell their family stories, tell their stories.

I think people came home from the war and just so I think war really, they didn't want to tell us any stories.

They wanted to go on with their lives.

They wanted to live.

They wanted to baby boom.

Right.

Like, they wanted to have a life now, a life that they defended, they wanted to have.

And it wasn't about what they did, which I agree with you.

When he says I'm no hero, I'd be like, well, you're all heroes.

It's not.

Yeah, I see how you don't want to, like, individualize yourself, but everybody who was on D day that day is a.

Was a hero.

Yeah.

And I mean, that's why I still refer to them as the greatest generation.

Historians will go around about that, not mature.

Like, how would we use that?

But I still think it is the greatest generation because of what they did.

But the surprise to me in looking at your book is how many of these stories are not told.

Right.

And we're still finding them, we're still telling them.

Here's a great avenue to tell them.

And so many people like, you know, you found these jackets.

They were coming out of the woodwork because they weren't told.

And there was no avenue to tell them.

And I'm thankful that you told them.

Well, you know, Jim, I got to thinking about all of this at one point, and I realized That I probably couldn't have done this 20 years ago, you know, because the Internet is such a wonderful medium of communication.

People wouldn't have known about it and I wouldn't have been contacted out of the blue.

The technology with self published.

This is a self published book which by the way, has won silver in two international design competitions.

Congrats.

Thank you.

It is beautiful.

Yeah, Darren just did a wonderful job.

And I hired a fashion consultant, fashion historian, I should say, Laura McClaus helms.

And she wrote a section for me, an essay on the fashion and cultural impact of the jackets.

That's super neat.

You know, I shopped it around for a bit to several publishers, got a little bit of lukewarm interest.

And at one point I realized that even if somebody had said yes, they would have gone into a queue a year later.

They would have got to it.

They would have been subject to their whims and wishes as to content and flow and everything else.

And at one point I'm like, heck with it.

I know what I want.

I know what we have here and we're going to do it ourselves.

And that's what we did.

And.

And I wanted to make a book that I would like to read.

Yeah, yeah, than that.

Yeah.

And I think you kind of just preempted one of my.

One of my last questions here was what advice would you give to someone who wanted to start a kind of like a personal pass and passion project like this, like you did, Whether they're a photographer or you know, one of their other.

Whatever other hobby they might have.

But what advice would you give to someone who wanted to do something like what you did?

You know, I've.

I've thought about that too a little bit.

And this may sound a little flippant, but, you know, I'm sure that there is probably a tiddlyweek society out there.

If you're interested in tiddlywinks, do it.

Siddly wing project, you know.

You know, you know, especially with the Internet, you know, whatever your interest is, dive down that hole and see where it leads.

Somebody else has got to be interested in tiddlywinks.

And so start again.

When I started, I had no concept of where this might lead.

And just as an aside, we had a meeting three weeks ago now with a film documentary producer here in Atlanta.

Ooh, cool.

And if we can raise the money, we're going to do a documentary based on the stories in the book.

Oh, wow, that would be so great.

So, you know, because we do want to tell these stories to the younger generation, you know, I just cringe when you hear, you know, high school teachers mentioned World War 11.

I'm like, what are you thinking?

You know, let's wake up here.

I had the opportunity to sit in on a history class at the local high school several years ago as the minder, so to speak.

And I tried to tell these kids a little bit about this.

They had no clue, no clue about World War II and what happened then, still influencing our lives today and will for the foreseeable future.

And they just, they are not connecting the dots in any way, shape or form.

So that's another reason to do the documentary so that we can break it up into bite sized units, so to speak, that we can show to high school kids and maybe bring a little bit history into their lives.

And, you know, and the other thing too, I realized your granddad was a lot cooler than you thought he was.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I mean, they really were.

They were very bright.

Yeah.

You know, he may look like a frail old man right now, but, you know, there was a time when he wasn't.

That's right.

That is so true.

That's right.

Well, I love that.

I love that you're like the, a part of the custodian of, you know, American history.

And I think that's fantastic.

It's important.

I think it's passionate.

And I think that nothing will replace that when it comes to motivation and getting stuff out there.

If you're passionate about something and you feel like this is important, it needs to be told.

Nothing will replace that.

So I think what you do is fantastic.

We're so happy to talk to you today and to showcase you.

Where can people, where's the best place people should buy the book?

Like the best place to support you, support your work?

Where's the best place for them to get the book?

The.

The Barber Boys website.

Okay.

It's www.wwii bomberboys with an S dot com.

Okay.

And I ship them.

That's my shipping office right behind me.

I've got a pallet of them here in the other room.

Right on.

And about 3200 or so still in Texas.

Okay.

We printed 5000 all total.

So it's a fantastic gift, especially for the historian lover in your life.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

Like, this is a fantastic gift.

Everybody who loves World War II history should have this book.

It's a great coffee table book.

Artistically, it's beautiful.

So it's one of those books you could actually just flip open and leave open.

Like it is A beautiful book.

So it's more than just a book.

It's something that you can actually display if you're a historian and love history.

Right.

We've sent three to Australia, one to Malaysia.

Oh, cool.

More than one or two to Europe.

It has been for sale in two bookstores in England, 12 museums and so on here in the States.

And the National Archives Foundation Bookstore just started carrying on.

Oh, right on.

So, you know, we're trying to get it out there and to sustain that, but every little bit helps.

And I appreciate your time and interest and passion about helping to tell the story.

And to answer your question again too, passion helps, you know, in doing a project you don't want to just.

I might be interested in this, you know, if you're not.

If you're not passionate about it, you're not going to sustain it and see it through.

So a little bit of passion goes a long way.

Yeah, I would say that was true about flight training as well.

Yes.

I always tell people, you've got to want to be it.

You've got to want to be a pilot because it is not easy.

Yeah, you got to want to be there.

Yeah.

That's so great to talk to you today.

Thank you for your time.

Now, you said you also have a blog.

Where can people find your blog, learn more about it?

It's on the Bottom Boys website.

Ok.

Website.

And we'll put all that stuff in the show notes to our listeners.

And we're actually going to publish a video version of this as well on our main channel.

So anybody watching or listening, look in the video description or the podcast show notes.

I'll include the website direct link so they can support your work.

And then we're going to run off to the post office and see if the book showed up and so hopefully we can get that there.

So thank you so much again, John, for joining us.

Okay, Jen.

So that was our interview with John.

I really enjoyed it.

And there was a couple twists in there that I wasn't expecting.

Yeah.

You know, once you start down that history trail, the avenues it takes you.

It's like the rabbit hole, right?

The avenues it takes you and the things you find and what he's learned, that these jackets are more than just a jacket, that these actually are stories, men's lives, their.

Their memories of their time serving in World War II.

And.

And it was so funny because I said this after we had finished recording the interview with him was like he really buried the lead because about two thirds of the way through the interview and if you guys are watching or listening to this, you guys have watched the whole thing.

And so you already know this.

But he mentioned that he got to photograph Jimmy Stewart's flight jacket.

Yeah.

And the only person who has a full photograph of the jacket, like the.

The only one, he said that the museum hadn't pulled it out of their archive since like the 60s.

Yeah.

It was the first time they had done it, which is good because they did a condition report of it too.

But no one had photographed the entire jacket, front and back.

And he was able to do that.

I really just loved.

And I would love to hear back from our audience and, you know, shoot us an email or drop us a note or comment in Spotify what you guys took away from this interview.

Because I could tell this really, truly was a passion project for him and the stuff that he learned from talking to some of these World War II veterans, from photographing these true Americana pieces of history, I could feel it in the interview.

It really was.

And what an incredible eight year journey for him.

Absolutely.

And if you're interested in producing the book and you do, let us know what you think of it or if you have a connection to a bomber jacket yourself, some family member, let us know as well.

We'd love to hear more stories about these jackets and see more photographs of the art.

Yeah.

So if you're still here, I'm going to guess that you're interested in this book.

We will have a link in the show notes description or the video description, so please go check it out.

I think it's actually a steal for what he has it listed at.

For what you're getting out of this and the quality that it is.

Buy it for yourself.

Buy it for a history fan.

Support that history and the preservation of it.

Yeah.

Thank you.

This has been Walk with his reproduction.

Talk with History is created and hosted by me, Scott Benny.

Episode researched by Jennifer Benny.

Check out the show notes for links and references mentioned in this episode.

Talk with History is supported by our fans@thehistoryroadtrip.com our eternal thanks to those providing funding to help keep us going.

Thank you to Doug McLiverty, Larry Myers and Patrick Benny.

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