Enlisted Aviation Warfare Specialist EAWS Patch

The wings on this patch are silver, not gold, and every Sailor who wore them knows exactly what that means: gold is for officers, silver is for the enlisted. This is the Enlisted Aviation Warfare Specialist insignia, the warfare qualification of the Navy's enlisted aviation community. The spread wings carry a shield with a fouled anchor at center and a scroll beneath reading AIR WARFARE. The qualification dates to 19 March 1980, when the enlisted aviation ratings finally got a warfare pin of their own. Nobody in the community calls it anything but the AW pin.

Nobody is issued this insignia; it is signed for, line by line, through the Personnel Qualification Standards book a candidate carries from workcenter to workcenter. Earning it means learning the whole airplane and the whole flight deck, far beyond your own rating's corner of it, and then facing the qualification board everyone calls a murder board the first time through. The surface fleet's version is the Enlisted Surface Warfare Specialist qualification, the older sibling this program was modeled on. Squadron by squadron after 1980, the pin became the mark of a Sailor who understood the mission behind the maintenance card. The family kept growing too, with the Enlisted Information Warfare Specialist qualification arriving later for the cryptologic and intelligence ratings. Once qualified, the letters AW ride behind a Sailor's rate for the rest of his career.

The patch itself is the Navy ratings-plate format, 4.5 inches wide by 3.25 tall, with a navy blue merrowed border. Gold bands arc across the top and bottom, UNITED STATES NAVY above and ENLISTED AVIATION WARFARE SPECIALIST below, lettered in blue. The silver-white wings stretch nearly the full width of the dark blue field, feather detail stitched layer by layer, with the anchor shield at center. It reads from across a room the way the pin reads across a hangar bay. The backing is iron on, and it will take a needle if you would rather sew it.

The flight deck of a carrier has been called the most dangerous working environment in the Navy, and the AW pin was built for the people who run it. Aviation Machinist's Mates, Aviation Ordnancemen, Aviation Boatswain's Mates, Aircrew Survival Equipmentmen, every rating that keeps aircraft flying could earn it, and after the mid-1980s most that wanted advancement did. The pin says its wearer could tell you what every colored jersey on the deck was doing and why. That breadth is the entire point of a warfare qualification.

It mounts well in a shadow box between a rate patch and the squadron patches from each tour. It also goes to the Sailor in the family who still remembers his PQS card number, or on a vest at a squadron reunion. The pin came off with the uniform. The qualification never did.