USS John F. Kennedy CV-67 Big John Aircraft Carrier Patch

There are 51 stars around the center of this patch: 50 for the states, and one more at the top for the high state of readiness USS John F. Kennedy was built to hold. CV-67 was the last conventionally powered aircraft carrier the U.S. Navy ever built, a one-of-a-kind modified Kitty Hawk design commissioned at Newport News on September 7, 1968. Caroline Kennedy, nine years old, christened the ship named for her father. Sailors called her Big John. She spent almost four decades with the Atlantic Fleet, first out of Norfolk and then Mayport, before she was decommissioned in 2007.

In December 1983 her aircraft flew strikes over Lebanon after the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut. On January 4, 1989, two F-14A Tomcats from VF-32 shot down two Libyan MiG-23s near Tobruk with no American losses. During Desert Storm she was flagship of the Red Sea Battle Force, with Carrier Air Wing 3 flying A-6 Intruders, A-7 Corsair IIs and F-14 Tomcats off her deck. F/A-18 Hornets joined the air wing in 1991, alongside E-2C Hawkeyes and S-3 Vikings, and in 2002 her aircraft flew Operation Enduring Freedom missions over Afghanistan. Her last home port was Mayport Naval Station in Florida.

The patch is a 4.5-inch circle with a gold rope border and a white ring lettered UNITED STATES SHIP JOHN F. KENNEDY, with CV-67 at the bottom. At the center is a black shield with three gold helmets, the old arms of the O'Kennedys of Ormonde; the family name comes from the Gaelic for "helmeted head." The red and white border around the shield carries the colors of the Fitzgeralds of Desmond, the President's mother's family. Gold wings spread behind the shield for air power, an armored arm holding arrows between olive branches rises above it for power and peace, and two white dolphins curl beneath it for the sea and the sailors who work it.

Big John was the only ship of her class, and she carried that from her first cruise to her last. Her crews took her through the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the North Arabian Sea, from the Cold War to Desert Storm to Afghanistan. She was decommissioned in 2007 and held in reserve at Philadelphia for years. In January 2025 she left Philadelphia under tow for the final time, bound for Brownsville, Texas, to be dismantled.

Put it in a shadow box with your cruise book and air wing patches, or on the vest you wear to Kennedy reunions. It also makes a good gift for a father or grandfather who still says Big John like he is talking about a shipmate. The name lives on in the new USS John F. Kennedy CVN-79, christened by Caroline Kennedy in 2019. This one is for the ship he actually rode.