USS Hunley AS-31 Patch

USS Hunley (AS-31) was the first ship the Navy designed and built from the keel up to service and maintain its nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines. Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company launched her on 28 September 1961, and she was commissioned on 16 June 1962. A tender is a floating repair base, and Hunley let a missile boat come alongside, get what she needed and go back out on patrol without a trip to a shipyard. She carried the name of Horace Lawson Hunley, whose submarine H. L. Hunley was the first submarine to sink an enemy vessel. Her motto was "We Serve to Preserve Peace," and it is stitched right on this patch.

Hunley left the Norfolk Operating Base on 29 December 1962 and arrived at Holy Loch, Scotland, on 9 January 1963. On 15 March 1963 she relieved USS Proteus (AS-19) as tender to Submarine Squadron 14 (SUBRON 14), servicing the Polaris boats based there. In April 1964 she sailed for conversion to handle the A3 Polaris missile, and she was back at Holy Loch by 15 June. In December 1965 she began the 100th SSBN refit of her career, with USS Thomas A. Edison (SSBN-610) alongside. She returned to the United States in late 1966 and was operating out of Charleston, South Carolina, by 1967, and her shops worked on boats including USS Theodore Roosevelt (SSBN-600) and USS Ethan Allen (SSBN-608).

The patch is a shield with a cut edge, a gold scroll across the top reading USS HUNLEY and a second gold scroll at the bottom reading AS-31. A black line with a lightning-bolt jog runs corner to corner across the white field. On the left the tender sits bow-on with her anchor chain down, and a crane swings out from her deck lowering a load toward the water. On the right a submarine rides on the surface with her black sail up, and the motto is stitched above her in block letters: WE SERVE TO PRESERVE PEACE. Green hills and blue water run behind both hulls, a tender and her boat working the same anchorage.

Tender duty did not make the news, and the crews never expected it to. The work recorded for Hunley tells the story: welding on SSBN pressure hulls, reactor plant fluid systems, propeller replacement, navigation and fire control repairs, all done alongside instead of in a shipyard. A refit ran against a patrol date, and Ethan Allen's battery replacement was finished in 11 days. Machinists, welders, electricians and missile technicians all had a hand in every boat that went back out. Hunley was decommissioned on 30 September 1994 after 32 years of that work.

Mounted in a shadow box next to the patches of the boats she tended, this one shows the whole relationship in one picture. It sits well on a reunion vest or a jacket, and it makes a fitting gift for a former tender sailor or a submariner who once tied up alongside her. It is 3.62 inches wide and 4.5 inches tall, with a cut edge, and it comes ready to press on with an iron-on backing. The boats made the patrols, and Hunley kept them making them.