Operation Deep Freeze Antarctica Patch

On 31 October 1956 a Navy R4D named "Que Sera Sera" set down at the South Pole, the first aircraft ever to land there, with Lieutenant Commander Conrad "Gus" Shinn at the controls. That landing belonged to Operation Deep Freeze. The operation began in November 1955 under Task Force 43, with Rear Admiral George J. Dufek in command and Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd, veteran of four earlier Antarctic expeditions, as officer in charge. The Navy built the stations, flew the airlift and broke the ice that put the United States on the continent for the International Geophysical Year. It kept doing that work for more than four decades.

Deep Freeze I set up Little America on Kainan Bay and a base at McMurdo, whose airfield became Williams Field. A specially trained Navy construction battalion formed at Davisville, Rhode Island, went south with the task force, and the South Pole station was built by airlift and commissioned on 1 January 1957; today it is the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Icebreakers USS Edisto, USS Glacier and USCGC Eastwind cut the early channels, and later seasons brought USCGC Northwind, Polar Sea and Polar Star. In the air, R4D Skytrains and P2V Neptunes gave way to the LC-130 Hercules, flown by Antarctic Development Squadron Six, VX-6 and later VXE-6. The Navy handed the mission to the Air National Guard's 109th Airlift Wing of Scotia, New York, and the Guard had the whole program by 1999.

The patch is a round design with a banner across the bottom, 3.5 inches wide and 3.75 inches high, trimmed with a cut edge that follows its outline. An orange-gold anchor stands behind a quartered shield, set on a white globe ruled with meridian lines over pale blue ice. The quarters hold a gray ship on the horizon, a penguin on dark blue bars, a black aircraft silhouette on red and white stripes, and an orange bee, the mark of the Seabees. "OPERATION DEEP FREEZE" circles the globe in dark blue letters, and "ANTARCTICA" runs in red across the orange banner. Ship, aircraft, builders and the ice itself, the whole operation fits in one shield.

Antarctic duty meant cold, wind and isolation that no other Navy assignment matched. Summer crews flew and built through a short season, and winter-over parties stayed on when the last aircraft left and the sun went down for months. The ice cost lives over the years, aircrews among them, and the men who served there remember those losses. The stations, runways and supply routes the Navy put in place are the ones American science in Antarctica still runs on. Few sailors ever saw the continent, and the ones who did never stopped talking about it.

Mount it in a shadow box with an Antarctica Service Medal, a VX-6 or VXE-6 squadron patch and a photo from McMurdo, or sew it on a cold-weather jacket. It is a fitting gift for a Deep Freeze veteran, Seabee or icebreaker sailor, or for a grandchild who wants to know what Grandpa did down there. The iron-on backing presses on, and a few stitches make it permanent. It is a small piece of a very cold place.