United States Tank Destroyer Patch

Look past the fangs and you will find the tank: a track and road wheels on each side of the panther's jaws, and a gun barrel jutting out past its cheek. This is the tank destroyer patch, a black panther crushing a tank in its jaws, worn by the men of the Army's World War II tank destroyer battalions. The force existed to kill enemy armor. Its motto was Seek, Strike, and Destroy, and it meant tank destroyers were not to wait passively for enemy tanks to come to them. The cat on the patch says the same thing with its teeth.

In May 1941 General George C. Marshall formed an Anti-Tank Planning Board under Lt. Col. Andrew D. Bruce and gave Brig. Gen. Lesley J. McNair the job of organizing antitank forces. On 27 November 1941 Marshall ordered a Tank Destroyer Tactical and Firing Center under Bruce, and its training ground in Texas became Camp Hood. The battalions fought with a run of vehicles: the M3 gun motor carriage with a 75mm gun on a half-track, the M10 with a 3-inch gun in an open-topped turret, the fast M18 Hellcat with its 76mm gun, and the M36 with a 90mm gun, while towed battalions pulled the 3-inch M5 gun. At El Guettar in Tunisia in 1943, the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion stood against the 10th Panzer Division and knocked out 30 of its 57 tanks, losing 24 of its own 36 M3s. More than 100 battalions were formed, and more than half of them saw combat.

This patch is a 4.5 by 4.5 inch round with a black merrowed edge around a bright orange field. The panther's head fills the center in black, with white eyes, a red V on the brow, a red nose and long white whiskers. Its jaws hang open around white fangs and a red mouth. The tank's tracks and orange road wheels spread out from both sides of its mouth, and the gun tube angles up and out to the right. It has an iron-on backing and can also be sewn on.

The tank destroyer men took on the job of meeting enemy armor head on, often in vehicles that traded armor for a bigger gun and more speed. El Guettar showed both sides of that bargain, a German armored attack broken and most of a battalion's half-tracks lost doing it. Sixty-three battalions were still active when the war ended. The Tank Destroyer Center closed on 10 November 1945, and the last battalion was deactivated in 1946. The panther stayed on, on veterans' jackets and in the collections of armor buffs who know the cat on sight.

Mount it in a shadow box with a grandfather's tank destroyer battalion photo and his discharge papers, or put it on the jacket worn to a WWII armor show. It also makes a gift for the model builder who has an M18 Hellcat on the shelf and wants the patch to go with it. The cat still has the tank in its teeth.