CVN-73 USS George Washington Aircraft Carrier Patch

USS George Washington was commissioned on the Fourth of July, 1992, and her crest carries the first president's actual signature stitched across the water beneath the hull. The two flags crossed behind the ship decode the whole design: the thirteen-star flag of the republic Washington founded on one side, the fifty-star flag his namesake defends on the other. His profile stands in black silhouette behind the island while the bow comes straight at you. The motto on the upper band is SPIRIT OF FREEDOM. She is the sixth Nimitz class carrier, and the only one whose birthday is Independence Day.

In autumn 2008 she relieved CV-63 USS Kitty Hawk at Yokosuka and became the first nuclear powered carrier ever forward deployed to Japan. For seven years she was Seventh Fleet's front-line flattop, the American deck the western Pacific saw most. Carrier Air Wing Five, the Navy's only permanently forward deployed air wing, flew from her the entire tour. She came home in 2015 for the refueling and complex overhaul at Newport News, the midlife yard period every Nimitz class hull earns around its 25th year. In July 2024 she and CVN-76 USS Ronald Reagan swapped places at San Diego, and by August she was moored at Yokosuka again as the forward deployed carrier. Her air wing came back aboard flying F-35Cs and CMV-22Bs, a different navy from the one she left in 2015.

The patch is 4.25 by 4.5 inches, cut following a silver-gray rope border. Inside, the carrier rides a two-tone blue sea under Washington's silhouette, the crossed flags stitched in full color, red, white, and blue against the pale sky. Stars run the lower band on both sides of CVN 73, with USS GEORGE WASHINGTON across the bottom scroll in white on blue. The signature sits small in the water, the detail most people find second and remember first. The backing is iron on, and it will take a needle if you would rather sew it.

A Nimitz class carrier is a city of about five thousand, and the forward deployed years meant that city lived where it worked, families ashore in Japan, the ship answering every Seventh Fleet bell. Being first meant something too: no nuclear powered carrier had ever been homeported in Japan before 2008, and the trust that took was built watch by watch. Her Sailors measured those years in port calls, typhoon sorties, and flight deck certifications that never seemed to end. Few ships get the same historic job twice. This one earned it back.

It mounts well in a shadow box with cruise patches and a CVW-5 squadron patch from the same years. It also goes to the plankowner from 1992, or the FDNF Sailor whose kids went to school in Yokosuka. The signature on the crest belongs to the namesake. The service record belongs to the crew.