Desert Storm Task Force 154 Battle Force Patch - Midway America Roosevelt Ranger

The colors behind the ships on this patch are Kuwait's flag: green, white and red bands with a black trapezoid at the hoist. Kuwait is the country Task Force 154 was sent to free. Task Force 154 was the carrier battle force that fought Desert Storm from inside the Persian Gulf, known as Battle Force Zulu. Four flattops ended the war there together, and their names are stitched around the flag: Midway, America, Roosevelt and Ranger. U.S. forces in the region often called those waters the Arabian Gulf, the name across the top of the patch.

Rear Admiral Daniel P. March commanded the force from USS Midway CV-41, the flagship and the oldest carrier in the war. Midway's Carrier Air Wing 5 flew 3,383 combat sorties off just two catapults, and her VA-185 A-6E Intruders were among the first allied jets over enemy territory on January 17. USS Ranger CV-61 brought Carrier Air Wing 2, and USS Theodore Roosevelt CVN-71 brought Carrier Air Wing 8. USS America CV-66 and Carrier Air Wing 1 began the war in the Red Sea and moved into the Gulf before it ended. On March 2, 1991, the four carriers steamed together in the Gulf with the Aegis cruisers USS Leyte Gulf CG-55, USS Bunker Hill CG-52 and USS Normandy CG-60.

The patch is a 4-inch circle with a black merrowed edge and a wide tan band. ARABIAN GULF BATTLE FORCE arches across the top and DESERT STORM and TASK FORCE 154 run along the bottom in blue, with a white star on each side. Inside, a tan map of the region lies over the Kuwaiti flag, and a white, billowing shape rises off it like the smoke from the oil fires Iraqi troops set in Kuwait. Four white ship silhouettes and two jets cross the map, with the carrier stretched across the center, her flight deck flat to the horizon. The four carrier names circle them in gold: MIDWAY and AMERICA above, ROOSEVELT and RANGER below.

Midway was commissioned in September 1945, so Desert Storm came 45 years into her career, and it was her last war. She came home to Yokosuka in April 1991 with a Navy Unit Commendation and was decommissioned the next year. Ranger followed her out of service in 1993 and America in 1996, while Theodore Roosevelt is still on active duty. For the airmen, plane handlers, ordies and snipes of those four ships, the Gulf in early 1991 meant around-the-clock flight ops in a narrow sea with mines in the water. This patch puts all four decks on one piece of cloth.

The backing is sew-on, so stitch it onto a cruise jacket, a reunion vest or a sea bag. It also fits a shadow box beside a Southwest Asia Service Medal or a cruise book from 1990-91, and it makes a good gift for a son, daughter or grandchild who wants to know where you were that winter. Sewn on, it stays put through wash after wash. Four carriers, one Gulf, and a job that got done.