USS Razorback SS-394 Torpedo Whale Large Patch

A razorback is a whale, one of the rorquals with the long grooves down the throat, and on this patch the whale has a submarine for a back. The red hull and sail ride on top of the animal, and a red torpedo is leaving its open mouth. USS Razorback SS-394 was a Balao-class fleet submarine built at the Portsmouth Navy Yard in New Hampshire. She was laid down on 9 September 1943, launched on 27 January 1944 and commissioned on 3 April 1944 under Lt. Cmdr. Albert M. Bontier. She made five war patrols before the war ended. On 31 August 1945 she entered Tokyo Bay with eleven other submarines for the formal surrender of Japan.

Her second war patrol, which began in November 1944, damaged the freighter Kenjo Maru and sank the destroyer Kuretake. On the third patrol in February 1945 she sank four wooden ships, and on the fifth, in July, she sank six wooden cargo sea trucks and damaged two more. The fourth patrol was lifeguard duty, and she pulled four B-29 Superfortress aircrew and a fighter pilot out of the water. Razorback earned five battle stars for World War II. She was decommissioned in August 1952 for a GUPPY IIA conversion and came back into commission in January 1954. Deployed to the western Pacific in 1965, she went on to earn four battle stars for Vietnam.

The patch is a 5 inch circle, 5 inches wide by 5 inches tall, on a black field with a black merrowed edge. The whale arcs across the center in gray and white, teeth bared, with the red submarine hull and sail along its back and two masts standing up from the sail. A red torpedo leaves its mouth toward the lower left, and a white burst of smoke sits in the upper left. Gray swallowtail banners carry SS-394 across the top and U.S.S. RAZORBACK across the bottom in black letters. The back is sew-on, so it is meant to be stitched down to a jacket, vest or display backing.

Razorback was struck from the Navy list and transferred to Turkey on 30 November 1970, serving as TCG Murat Reis (S-336) until August 2001. The city of North Little Rock bought her and towed her home from Turkey, and she reached the Port of Little Rock on 29 August 2004. She is now part of the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum on the Arkansas River, and she was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005. She is one of only two surviving submarines that were present at the surrender in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945. Men who rode her through the war, the GUPPY years and the Vietnam deployments can still walk her decks.

Frame it in a shadow box with a set of dolphins and a war patrol pin, or sew it to the vest worn to a submarine veterans' reunion. It is also a good gift for a son or grandson whose family served aboard her, or for anyone who has toured the boat in North Little Rock. The sew-on backing is made to be stitched down. One boat, one whale, one torpedo on the way.