11th Airborne Division US Army Patch

At dawn on 23 February 1945, paratroopers of the 11th Airborne Division came down on Los Banos and freed 2,147 civilian internees from a Japanese camp. It remains one of the most famous raids in airborne history, and it belongs to a division whose special designation is the Angels. The 11th was activated on 25 February 1943 at Camp Mackall, North Carolina, under Major General Joseph Swing. It fought in the Pacific, led the occupation of Japan and has come back to life more than once. Since 2022 it has served in Alaska as the Arctic Angels.

The division went to war with the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment and the 187th and 188th Glider Infantry Regiments, the 188th converting to a parachute regiment in July 1945. Its campaigns ran through New Guinea, Leyte and Luzon, including the Battle of Manila in 1945. On 23 June 1945 its Gypsy Task Force operated in northern Luzon in the division's final combat action of the war. Douglas MacArthur picked the 11th to lead the occupation forces, and the first transport, carrying General Swing, set down at Atsugi Airfield at 0600 on 30 August 1945. The division was inactivated in 1958, came back in 1963 as an air assault test division at Fort Benning, and on 6 June 2022 U.S. Army Alaska was redesignated the 11th Airborne Division.

This patch is 2.25 inches wide and 3.75 inches tall, a blue shield with the AIRBORNE tab worked in as one piece and trimmed with a cut edge. White letters spell AIRBORNE across the blue tab, set off by a thin khaki line above the shield. On the shield, a red disc carries a white numeral 11, ringed in white. Two white wings spread from either side of the disc, the mark of a division that went to war by parachute and glider. It has an iron-on backing and can also be sewn on.

Men of the 11th jumped, glided and fought through some of the hardest country in the Pacific, and Los Banos is the story every one of them could tell. Being chosen to set foot in Japan first said plenty about how the division was regarded. The 187th went on to Korea as a separate airborne regiment, carrying the 11th's fighting record with it. Today's soldiers in Alaska wear the Arctic Tab, authorized in April 2022, alongside their Airborne Tab. The wings and the red 11 tie a Leyte paratrooper to a cold-weather soldier in Alaska today.

Sew it to a jacket for an 11th Airborne reunion, or set it in a shadow box with a grandfather's jump wings and Pacific photos. It also makes a fitting gift for a soldier reporting to Alaska with the Arctic Angels. Wings, a red disc and the number 11, and the whole Pacific story behind them.