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Col. Hubert "Hub" Zemke

This A-2 flight jacket was issued to the donor, Col. Hubert "Hub" Zemke, when assigned to his first active duty unit, the 8th Pursuit Group at Langley Field, Va., in 1937. He wore it while demonstrating the P-40 in England and the Soviet Union in the spring and summer of 1941. Zemke also wore it when his unit, the 56th Fighter Group, went to Europe in December 1942. The red lining is not an original feature of the A-2 jacket. The 56th had a tradition that when a pilot became an ace, he could have red lining sewn into his flight jacket; Zemke was credited with 17-3/4 victories (the fraction resulted from sharing credit for a single kill with other pilots).

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