CV-61 USS Ranger Minuteman Patch

A minuteman stands at the center of this USS Ranger patch, musket at his side, and the name Ranger goes back to the Revolution: the first Ranger was the Continental Navy sloop John Paul Jones took to sea in 1777. In February 1778 Jones's Ranger received a salute from the French fleet, the first formal salute to the American flag by a foreign navy. Two months later she captured the British sloop HMS Drake. The aircraft carrier CV-61 carried that name through the jet age. The silhouette in the oval is the same citizen-soldier spirit, set against stars and stripes.

USS Ranger (CV-61) was the third of four Forrestal-class supercarriers, laid down at Newport News Shipbuilding on August 2, 1954, launched September 29, 1956, and commissioned on August 10, 1957, at Norfolk. She joined the Pacific Fleet with Alameda, California, as her homeport and later moved to San Diego. Ranger flew strikes from Yankee Station on repeated deployments starting in 1964, and earned 13 battle stars for Vietnam service. Carrier Air Wing 2 (CVW-2) came aboard in 1967 and stayed with her through Operation Desert Storm in 1991, when she was the only West Coast carrier in the fight. On February 6, 1991, an F-14A Tomcat from VF-1 shot down an Iraqi Mi-8 helicopter. Her final WestPac took her into Operation Southern Watch and off Somalia for Operation Restore Hope before she was decommissioned on July 10, 1993.

This is a shield-shaped patch, 4 inches wide and 5 inches tall, outlined in black with a cut edge that follows the shield and its scrolls. Across the blue top are seven white stars. Below them, red and white stripes run diagonally across the shield, and a white oval in the center holds the black silhouette of a minuteman with his musket. Three scrolls frame the bottom of the shield: USS on the left, CV-61 on the right and RANGER across the base. The backing is iron-on.

Ranger crews called her the Danger Ranger, and she earned the Top Gun nickname too, with interior scenes for the film shot aboard her in 1985. She spent 36 years in commission and made more than 20 WestPac deployments, from the Vietnam line periods to the Gulf. Thousands of sailors and aviators learned their trade on her flight deck and in her hangar bays, launching A-6 Intruders, F-4 Phantom IIs and F-14 Tomcats over the decades. After her decommissioning she waited at Bremerton until 2015, and she was scrapped at Brownsville, Texas, in 2017. The men who served on her still call her the Ranger, and nobody needs to ask which one.

It fits a shadow box with a Ranger cruise book and a sailor's ribbons, or a vest worn to a CV-61 reunion. It also makes a good gift for a father or grandfather who made a WestPac aboard her. The patch comes ready to iron on to a jacket or sea bag. The minuteman and the carrier carried the same name, and this patch puts both on one shield.