Cold War Silent Service Eternal Vigilance Submarine Patch

The dates on the bottom scroll, 1945 to 1991, are the Cold War by the government's own count: September 2, 1945 to December 26, 1991, the qualifying period for the Cold War Recognition Certificate. Congress authorized that certificate in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1998, for the service members and federal civilians who served in those years. For the submarine force, those 46 years ran from fleet boats home from the Pacific to nuclear boats on deterrent patrol. Silent Service is the name submariners use for their part of the Navy. Eternal Vigilance, the other line on this patch, is the job in two words.

USS Nautilus SSN-571 signaled Underway on Nuclear Power at 1100 on January 17, 1955. On August 3, 1958, she crossed the geographic North Pole submerged, part of a 1,830-mile run under the ice from Point Barrow, Alaska, to the Greenland Sea, and USS Skate SSN-578 surfaced at the Pole on March 17, 1959. USS Triton SSN-586 made the first submerged circumnavigation of the world in 1960, following Magellan's route on a voyage of about 41,500 miles in 84 days that ended on May 10. On July 20, 1960, USS George Washington SSBN-598 launched two Polaris missiles while submerged off Cape Canaveral, and on November 15, 1960, she sailed on the first armed Polaris deterrent patrol. USS Ethan Allen SSBN-608 launched the first Polaris missile with a nuclear warhead on May 6, 1962.

The patch is 4 inches wide and 5 inches tall, a round center with a scroll across the top and another across the bottom, finished with a black merrowed edge. COLD WAR fills the top scroll, ETERNAL VIGILANCE and SILENT SERVICE ring the center, and 1945 - 1991 closes out the bottom. Inside is a blue and green globe gridded in black, with silver submarine dolphins across the middle, the qualification device a sailor earns before the crew calls him a submariner. Count the boats and there are two: a black teardrop hull of the nuclear era riding high on the globe and a gray diesel boat below the dolphins, the two kinds of boat that served side by side through much of the Cold War. It has an iron-on backing and can be sewn on.

Cold War submarine duty meant long patrols in a sealed hull and very little a man could tell his family about where he had been. Diesel boats and nuclear boats shared the waterfront for years, and plenty of sailors started on one and finished on the other. Dolphins were earned by learning the boat's systems and proving it to the qualified men aboard. The Cold War ended in December 1991, and the boats had been on station the whole way through.

Put it on the vest you wear to a submarine veterans meeting, or in a shadow box with your dolphins and a photo of the boat. It makes a good gift for a shipmate, or for a son or grandson who knows his father rode submarines and not much more than that. Two boats, one set of dolphins, forty-six years.