USS Forrestal CVA-59 First in Defense Aircraft Carrier Patch

USS Forrestal was the first American carrier built from the keel up with an angled deck, steam catapults and an optical landing system, and every big-deck carrier the Navy has built since traces back to her. She was commissioned on October 1, 1955, the lead ship of the first class of supercarriers. Her namesake was James V. Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy and then the nation's first Secretary of Defense. That is where the motto comes from: First in Defense, which her crews shortened to FID. She served 38 years under three designations, CVA-59, CV-59 and finally AVT-59 as a training carrier, before she was decommissioned in 1993.

She made 21 Mediterranean deployments with the Sixth Fleet, one combat deployment to Vietnam and three North Atlantic cruises. Over the years her flight deck launched A-4 Skyhawks, F-4 Phantom IIs, A-5 Vigilantes, A-6 Intruders, A-7 Corsair IIs and F-14 Tomcats. E-2 Hawkeyes, S-3 Vikings, EA-6B Prowlers and SH-3 Sea Kings flew from her deck as well. She later shifted her home port from Norfolk to Mayport Naval Station in Florida. She finished her career at Pensacola in 1992 and 1993 as the Navy's training carrier, qualifying new aviators.

The patch is cut to a banner-and-shield shape, 3.5 inches wide by 4.25 inches tall, on a bright red field trimmed in gold. An eagle with a red, white and blue shield on its chest spreads its wings across the top, clutching arrows in its talons, with a white star on each side. Below it, a gold disc carries a black profile in silhouette, ringed by laurel branches and the motto FIRST IN DEFENSE. A navy blue scroll across the bottom reads U.S.S. FORRESTAL between two more white stars.

On July 29, 1967, on Yankee Station off Vietnam, a Zuni rocket misfired from an F-4 Phantom on Forrestal's flight deck and struck an A-4 Skyhawk, starting a fire that killed 134 sailors and injured 161. Her crew fought that fire and saved the ship, and the lessons of that day still shape how the Navy trains every sailor to fight fire at sea. Forrestal went on to serve another 26 years. Her sailors call themselves 59ers, and their association still keeps her history. She was sold for one cent in 2013 and dismantled at Brownsville, Texas, by the end of 2015.

Put it in a shadow box with your cruise book and air wing patches, or on the vest you wear to Forrestal reunions. It also makes a fitting gift for a son or grandson who wants to know what his father's ship was. The patch has an iron-on backing and can be sewn on as well. First in Defense still says it plainly.