Naval Air Station Jacksonville Florida NAOTC Embroidered Patch

The duck on this patch is still wearing his graduation mortarboard, and he has already dropped the textbooks to charge off with a machine gun. That was the job of Naval Air Operational Training Command, set up in 1942: take an aviator who had just pinned on his wings and make him ready for combat. Behind the duck lie the books he left behind and the leather flight helmet and goggles he grabbed on the way out. A thought bubble over his head holds an enemy pilot centered in a gunsight ring. The patch names its home plainly, Headquarters, Naval Air Operational Training Command, at United States Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida.

NAS Jacksonville was commissioned on October 15, 1940, with Captain Charles P. Mason as its first commanding officer. The station grew fast once the war came, adding three runways over 6,000 feet, seaplane facilities and an overhaul and repair shop that later became NARF Jax. More than 10,000 pilots and 11,000 aircrewmen earned their wings of gold there during World War II. NAOTC carried aviation training across the Southeast, was renamed Naval Air Advanced Training Command in the mid-1940s with fighter training as its focus, and merged with Commander, Fleet Air Jacksonville in 1948. That same year the first Navy jet carrier air groups arrived at Jax, and in later decades the P-3 Orion patrol squadrons and Helicopter Antisubmarine Wing One made the base an antisubmarine warfare center.

The patch is round, 4 inches wide by 4 inches tall, with a black merrowed edge around a cream twill field. Black lettering arcs across the top reading UNITED STATES NAVAL AIR STATION, with JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA beneath it. The duck charges across the patch in a brown flight jacket and tan field gear, his blue mortarboard tassel flying, a brown flight helmet in one hand and orange books dropped behind him. Three lines of black text across the bottom read HEADQUARTERS - NAVAL AIR OPERATIONAL TRAINING COMMAND. It has an iron-on backing and can also be sewn on.

Wartime training commands drew cartoon mascots for the same reason squadrons did. The work was deadly serious, the pipeline never stopped, and a bit of humor on a shoulder or a jacket kept people going. This design catches the moment every student aviator remembers, the day the classroom ended and the real flying began. NAS Jacksonville is still an active naval air station today, home to VP-30, the P-8 Poseidon fleet replacement squadron. Generations of naval aviators passed through those gates on their way to the fleet.

Mount it in a shadow box beside a set of wings or patrol squadron patches from a Jax tour. It also sits well on a flight jacket or a reunion vest, and it makes a thoughtful gift for a family member whose father or grandfather trained at Jacksonville during the war. A good piece of naval aviation history to keep close.