Naval Air Station Brunswick Maine Patch

When Naval Air Station Brunswick was commissioned on April 15, 1943, its first squadrons were British, Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm crews learning to fly Vought Corsairs, Grumman Avengers and Grumman Hellcats off the Maine coast. Those pilots flew submarine-hunting patrols from the field as they trained. The station was deactivated in October 1946 and came back as a patrol base. For most of the Cold War it was the Navy's maritime patrol station in New England. Its squadrons tracked Soviet submarines around the clock.

Through the 1950s the field flew the P2V Neptune and the PB4Y-2 Privateer, and in 1959 Fleet Air Wing Three was made up of VP-7, VP-10, VP-11, VP-21, VP-23 and VP-26. The transition to the P-3A Orion began in 1962. That October, during the Cuban crisis, Brunswick P2Vs and P-3As watched Soviet ships in the Atlantic. In 1965 and 1966 Fleet Air Wing Five aircraft helped locate Mercury and Gemini capsules after splashdown. The base was placed on the 2005 BRAC list, and the last P-3 Orions flew out on November 28, 2009.

The patch measures 4.5 inches wide by 4.25 inches tall, a rounded inverted triangle with a teal merrowed edge. U.S. NAVAL AIR STATION and BRUNSWICK, MAINE are stitched in black across the wide white band at the top. Inside the teal triangle, a brown and white eagle dives with its wings up and its talons reaching forward. Behind it is the outline of the state of Maine, edged in red, with snow-capped mountains, sky and green ground worked into the shape. It has an iron-on backing and can also be sewn on.

NAS Brunswick was decommissioned in a ceremony on May 31, 2011, after nearly seventy years of service. For the patrol crews and maintainers who served there, it meant long flights over cold water and winters on the flight line that nobody forgets. Brunswick P-3 crews flew those patrols until the end of the Cold War. The field now operates as Brunswick Executive Airport, and the rest of the base is Brunswick Landing. The squadrons that called it home are part of patrol aviation history.

It fits a shadow box with your VP squadron patches and a photo of the hangar line, or the vest you wear to a patrol squadron reunion. It also makes a good gift for anyone who did a tour in Brunswick. Teal and white, with the eagle over Maine.