USS Intrepid CVS-11 Aircraft Carrier Ship Patch

The Japanese hit Intrepid with a torpedo off Truk and with kamikazes on three separate days, and every time she came back. Sailors called her the Fighting I, and also the Dry I, because she spent so much of the war in repair yards between fights. She was an Essex-class carrier built at Newport News, launched on 26 April 1943 and commissioned that August. After the war she was rebuilt for jets, became an attack carrier, and then took on the antisubmarine role that gave her the CVS-11 hull number on this patch. Few ships of her class did as many different jobs.

The torpedo came on the night of 17 to 18 February 1944, during the strikes on Truk Lagoon. Kamikazes struck on 29 October 1944, again on 25 November 1944 when two planes hit her, and once more on 16 April 1945 off Okinawa. Redesignated CVA-11 in 1952, she later became CVS-11 and went to work for NASA as well as the fleet. Her crew recovered Scott Carpenter and Aurora 7 on 24 May 1962, then Gus Grissom and John Young after Gemini 3 on 23 March 1965. Between 1966 and 1969 she made three Vietnam deployments with Carrier Air Wing 10 embarked.

The patch is a round design in two halves, sea and sky. On the left, a carrier rides the waves across a dark blue gridded globe under the words IN MARE. On the right, gold stars sit on pale blue sky over IN COELO. A tall gold compass star splits the two halves, with an eight-pointed star at its center, and USS INTREPID and CVS-11 run around the blue outer ring in black. The motto means on the sea, in the sky, which is the carrier mission in four words.

Intrepid was decommissioned for the last time on 15 March 1974. In August 1982 she opened at Pier 86 on the Hudson River in New York City as the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, and she has been there since. That means a man who stood watch on her hangar deck can still walk it with his grandchildren. Very few sailors get that with their old ship. Her crews, from the Pacific in 1944 to the Gulf of Tonkin, share one hull that never went to the breakers.

This 4.5 inch round patch has a merrowed edge and an iron-on backing, and it can also be sewn on for a permanent hold. It fits a shadow box next to a cruise book and a set of ribbons, or the back of a reunion jacket. It also makes a good gift for a shipmate, or for a son or grandson heading to New York to see where Dad served. The Fighting I earned her place, and the patch keeps it close.