McMurdo Station Antarctica Patch

Navy Seabees opened the first American station on Hut Point Peninsula on 16 February 1956, and the Navy called it Naval Air Facility McMurdo. It sits at the southern tip of Ross Island, about 77 degrees 51 minutes south, a short walk from the hut built by Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery expedition. The name comes from McMurdo Sound, named in turn for Lieutenant Archibald McMurdo of HMS Terror. In 1961 the base became simply McMurdo. For four decades it was the Navy's front door to Antarctica, and anyone who wintered over there remembers the first sight of Observation Hill.

McMurdo was built for Operation Deep Freeze. Task Force 43 stood up on 1 February 1955 under Captain George J. Dufek, and Air Development Squadron Six, VX-6, the Puckered Penguins, was established at NAS Patuxent River that January. VX-6 flew R4D Skytrains, P2V Neptunes, R5D Skymasters, UC-1 Otters and later the ski equipped LC-130 Hercules. On 31 October 1956 an R4D named Que Sera Sera, flown by LCDR Conrad Shinn, made the first landing at the South Pole. Williams Field, about seven miles from the station, took the LC-130s, and the PM-3A reactor made the station's power from 1962.

This is a 4 inch round with a black merrowed border. White icicles hang from the top edge over a red arc reading "McMURDO STATION" in gold letters. Inside, snow falls on a blue sky behind a white peak, with red and tan station buildings and power poles lining a snowy road. The lower half is blue, with "ANTARCTICA" in white across the bottom and latitude and longitude lettered up each side. It looks like the station did on the walk back from the galley, with the wind coming down off the hill.

McMurdo was never a combat posting, and nobody who served there would call it easy duty. Winter-over crews lived through months of darkness, and summer crews kept aircraft flying in cold that punished men and machines alike. The Seabees, the VX-6 and VXE-6 crews, the ship's company and the scientists they supported all shared the same small town on the ice. The Navy's last flight from McMurdo came in 1999, and the station runs today under the National Science Foundation. The Navy's years at McMurdo are a chapter few sailors can claim.

Put it in a shadow box with an Antarctic Service Medal or a Deep Freeze cruise book, or on the jacket a Puckered Penguin wears to his squadron reunion. It is a solid gift for anyone who wintered over or flew the ice. It measures 4 by 4 inches with a merrowed edge and iron-on backing, and it can also be sewn on.