Technical Deck Rating Electronics Warfare Technician Patch

Look under the center device and the rating is spelled out twice, once in big white letters and once in signal flags: E, blue over red, and W, a red square inside white and blue. Anyone who stood a signal bridge watch reads those two flags without thinking. This is the patch of the Electronics Warfare Technician, the EW. The rating kept watch on the radar signals around a ship and gave the bridge early warning when something out there was searching for it. Two letters, two flags, one job.

On cruisers, destroyers, frigates, amphibious ships and carriers, electronic warfare at sea came to center on the AN/SLQ-32 suite, Slick-32 to the sailors who sat in front of it. It was conceived in the 1970s to back up and then replace the older AN/WLR-1. The (V)3 added active jamming against targeting and missile guidance radars, and the (V)4 tied two of those systems together for an aircraft carrier. After the 1987 attack on USS Stark FFG-31, the (V)5 gave the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates the Sidekick jammer. The suite cues the Mk 36 decoy launchers for chaff and infrared decoys, and more ships now carry the Mk 53 Nulka. On 1 October 2003 the EW rating merged into Cryptologic Technician Technical, and CTTs keep the SLQ-32 running today with its SEWIP upgrades.

This is the classic rating patch shape, 4.5 by 3.25 inches, with arched gold bands top and bottom and a navy blue merrowed edge. U. S. NAVY runs across the upper band in navy letters with a small American flag stitched between them. The center panel is navy blue outlined in white, with a white E on the left, a white W on the right, and between them a lightning bolt driven through two looping lines with a star at each side. The pair of signal flags sits just below, and ELECTRONICS WARFARE TECH runs along the bottom band. The back is iron-on, and it takes a needle and thread just as well.

Electronic warfare is quiet work, and much of the crew never saw it happen. EWs sat in a darkened corner of CIC watching a display and a threat library, and on a good watch the bridge heard about a contact long before it was a problem. The Stark attack cost 37 sailors their lives, and the fleet took the lessons straight into the gear and the training. Ships in the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz have counted on that watch ever since. The rate carries the CTT name now, but anyone who made rate as an EW still calls himself one.

Put it in a shadow box with a ship's plaque and a photo of your old ship, or sew it to the jacket you wear to a ship's reunion. It is a good gift for a father or grandfather who wore the EW crow. Every sailor who stood that watch knows what those two flags say.