US Air Force Communications Command Patch

Air Force Communications Command carried that name for less than twelve years, from 15 November 1979 to 1 July 1991, but its lineage runs back to an Army Air Corps airways communications system organized in November 1938. AFCC was the command that kept the Air Force talking. Its airmen ran the radio nets, telephone switches, data links, air traffic control towers and navigational aids that every flying unit depended on. Pilots rarely saw them. Every sortie still depended on them.

The line starts with the Army Airways Communications System, organized on 15 November 1938, which became the AACS Wing in 1943 and installed a worldwide chain of navigational aids for the Air Transport Command during World War II. After the war it was redesignated the Airways and Air Communications Service in 1946 and assigned to the Military Air Transport Service in 1948. On 1 July 1961 it became the Air Force's 16th major command as Air Force Communications Service, AFCS. It was redesignated Air Force Communications Command on 15 November 1979, with its history office at Scott AFB, Illinois. On 1 July 1991 it became a field operating agency, and its lineage continues today in the Cyberspace Capabilities Center.

The patch is a 3-inch shield finished with a cut edge and a gold border. A blue sky field fades from pale to deep blue, with four white stars and faint orbit lines sweeping across it. A blue globe fills the lower half, and from its edge a gold gauntlet hurls red-and-white lightning bolts up and out across the sky. A white scroll with gold rolled ends wraps the base and carries AIR FORCE COMMUNICATIONS COMMAND in blue letters. The gauntlet and lightning are the whole idea of the command in one picture: a signal thrown around the world on command.

Communications airmen worked in places most of the Air Force never thought about: mountaintop radio relay sites, remote control towers, switch rooms that ran around the clock and flight-check aircraft testing navaids. The work was technical, shift-heavy and judged only when it failed, which is why the people who did it took it so seriously. Radio operators, controllers, maintainers and switch technicians all wore the AFCC shield. Many carried that training into long civilian careers in telecommunications and aviation.

Frame it in a shadow box with your squadron patch and AFSC badge, or sew it to the vest you wear to comm reunions. It also makes a good gift for a father or grandfather who spent his career keeping the circuits up. The patch has an iron-on backing and can be sewn on as well. It is a small piece of a command that kept every other command connected.