Strategic Air Command SAC Embroidered Patch

The armored fist on the SAC shield holds three red lightning bolts and an olive branch in the same grip, and for 46 years that grip was the whole idea of the command. The lightning flashes stand for speed and power, the olive branch for peace, and the arm and armor for strength, power and loyalty. The motto put it in four words: Peace is Our Profession. Strategic Air Command was established on March 21, 1946, with headquarters at Bolling Field in Washington, D.C., and moved to Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, in November 1948. It held the bombers, tankers and missiles of American nuclear deterrence until June 1, 1992.

Gen. Curtis LeMay took command on October 19, 1948, and the force grew from B-29 Superfortresses and B-36 Peacemakers to the B-47 Stratojet, SAC's first jet strategic bomber, delivered from October 1951. The B-52 Stratofortress came next, then the B-58 Hustler, the FB-111 and finally the B-1B Lancer in the mid-1980s, with KC-135 Stratotankers keeping them on station. In the missile fields, Atlas, Titan and Minuteman crews went on alert from the early 1960s, and the Peacekeeper reached SAC in 1986. An EC-135 Looking Glass airborne command post stayed aloft without a break from February 3, 1961, to July 24, 1990. The command itself grew out of Continental Air Forces, activated on December 15, 1944, and took the SAC name in 1946.

The patch is a 3 by 3 inch shield with a yellow border and a cut edge that follows the outline, with a white scroll underneath lettered STRATEGIC AIR COMMAND in blue. The field is sky blue, the color that stands for Air Force operations, with white clouds drifting across the upper right and lower left. A gray armored arm reaches in from the right, the fist closed around three red lightning bolts and a sprig of green olive branch. Anyone who served under SAC saw this shape every working day, on the flight line, in the alert facility and on the shoulder of a flight suit.

SAC asked a great deal of its people. Bomber and tanker crews pulled alert beside loaded aircraft, ready to go on short notice, and missile crews stood their shifts underground in launch control capsules. Under Chrome Dome, armed B-52s and their tankers flew airborne alert from 1961 until January 1968, when the program ended after the B-52 crash near Thule Air Base, Greenland. When SAC was inactivated in 1992 its mission went to U.S. Strategic Command and its aircraft to Air Combat Command and Air Mobility Command, and the bombers and ICBMs came back together under Air Force Global Strike Command, activated in 2009. Peace is Our Profession held for the entire Cold War.

Put it in a shadow box with your bomb wing patch and crew wings, or on the vest you wear to a SAC reunion at Offutt or a wing get-together. It also makes a good gift for a son or daughter who grew up on a SAC base and wants a piece of that world. It irons on and can be sewn on as well. Anyone who sat alert will know this shield on sight.