Air Combat Command Patch

Air Combat Command stood up at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, on 1 June 1992, the same day Tactical Air Command, Strategic Air Command and Military Airlift Command were inactivated. It was the direct successor to TAC. On day one it took the former TAC fighters, every bomber in the Air Force, the reconnaissance fleet, battle management aircraft and the ICBM force. Gen. John M. Loh was its first commander and held the job until June 1995. If you wore ACC on your sleeve, you were part of the command built to put American combat air power in one set of hands.

The shape of the command kept moving. On 1 October 1993 nearly all KC-10 Extenders and KC-135 Stratotankers went to Air Mobility Command, while stateside C-130 Hercules units came to ACC until they returned to AMC in 1997. B-2 Spirit and B-52 Stratofortress units moved to Air Force Global Strike Command in 2010, and the B-1B Lancer wings followed in 2015. Today ACC flies the F-15E Strike Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-22A Raptor, F-35A Lightning II and A-10C Thunderbolt II, the Warthog. It also runs the E-3 Sentry AWACS, RC-135 Rivet Joint, MQ-9 Reaper and HH-60 rescue helicopters, under the First, Ninth, Twelfth, Fifteenth and Sixteenth Air Forces from headquarters at Joint Base Langley-Eustis.

This is a 3 inch shield. The upper field is light blue and the lower field is red, divided by a scalloped line. Gold wings rise from the red, and a silver sword with a red and black wrapped grip runs point down between them. A white scroll with a gold edge curls across the bottom with "AIR COMBAT COMMAND" in blue block letters. There is no hidden count on this one; it is wings, a sword and two fields of color, and airmen read it plainly. The edge is cut close to the shield and scroll outline.

ACC is the command most airmen think of when they think of the fight itself. Its fighter, attack, reconnaissance and rescue squadrons have flown in Operation Allied Force over Kosovo, combat operations over Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the crew chiefs, weapons loaders, intel analysts and controllers behind them carried the same shield. Plenty of people who wore it never left the flight line at Langley, Shaw, Nellis or Seymour Johnson, and the jets did not fly without them. That shield tied a pilot in a Raptor and a sheet metal troop in a hangar to the same command.

It fits a shadow box with a wing patch and a squadron patch from your ACC years, or a jacket worn to a squadron reunion. It is also a good gift for a son or daughter heading to an ACC base. Measures 3 x 3 inches with a cut edge and iron-on backing, and it can also be sewn on.