Naval Special Warfare Command Patch

Naval Special Warfare Command stood up on April 16, 1987, at Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, the naval component of the new U.S. Special Operations Command. Everything the Navy calls special warfare answers to it: the SEAL teams, the Special Boat Teams, the SEAL Delivery Vehicle Teams and the people who support them. The roots go back to the Scouts and Raiders of 1942 and the frogmen of the Underwater Demolition Teams. SEAL Team One and SEAL Team Two were formed from UDT men in 1962. In 1983 the UDTs were merged into the SEAL teams, and four years later the whole community came under one command.

Naval Special Warfare Group 1 on the West Coast holds SEAL Teams 1, 3, 5 and 7, and Group 2 on the East Coast holds SEAL Teams 2, 4, 8 and 10. Group 4 runs Special Boat Teams 12, 20 and 22, whose Special Warfare Combat Crewmen drive the fast boats that put SEALs in and take them out. Group 8 holds SEAL Delivery Vehicle Teams 1 and 2. The command also runs from Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek in Virginia Beach. Its people secured the Al Faw peninsula and cleared waterways to Umm Qasr in Iraq in 2003, and in 2011 operators of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group carried out Operation Neptune Spear in Abbottabad.

This patch is a 4 inch round with a gold border and a cut edge that follows the circle. A white outer ring carries UNITED STATES across the top and NAVAL SPECIAL WARFARE COMMAND around the bottom in blue letters, with a gold star on each side. Inside, a polar globe of blue sea and green land sits under a gold grid, the command's worldwide reach in one picture. Across it a gold eagle with spread wings grips an anchor, a trident and a flintlock pistol. That is the trident, the device a SEAL earns after BUD/S and SEAL Qualification Training, the one the teams call the Budweiser.

Every name on the Naval Special Warfare memorial walls came out of this community. In Kunar Province in 2005, during Operation Red Wings, Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy earned the Medal of Honor, awarded posthumously. The frogmen who cleared Utah and Omaha Beaches at Normandy in 1944 belong to the same line. The teams are small and the standards do not move, which is why a trident still means what it meant in 1970. To have served under this command is to have been part of the Navy's hardest school and its smallest community.

This patch has an iron-on backing and can also be sewn on, which holds up better on a jacket or gear bag. Frame it in a shadow box with your team patch and your trident, or put it on the vest you wear to a reunion in Coronado or Little Creek. It is a good gift for a son or grandson heading to BUD/S. The globe says the rest.