Wright Field Arrowhead Patch Wright-Patterson AFB Dayton Ohio

Before there was a Wright-Patterson, there was Wright Field, and this navy and gold arrowhead with WRIGHT across the middle is the Wright Field patch. Collectors of A-2 flight jackets know it from a period photo of Jimmy Doolittle wearing one on his leather jacket. Wright Field was formally dedicated on October 12, 1927, and for the next two decades it was where the Army's air arm engineered and tested its airplanes. It sat beside Huffman Prairie, the pasture outside Dayton where the Wright brothers flew the Wright Flyer II in 1904 and the Wright Flyer III in 1905. In 1948 Wright Field and Patterson Field were joined into one installation, and Air Force people have called it Wright-Patt ever since.

The ground goes back to May 22, 1917, when the Aviation Section of the U.S. Signal Corps established Wilbur Wright Field. In 1924 a Dayton committee presented the deeds to the land to President Calvin Coolidge, and the whole tract was designated Wright Field. In 1927 the Army's Materiel Division moved in from McCook Field across town. Patterson Field took its name on July 1, 1931, for Frank Stuart Patterson, killed with LeRoy Swan when their de Havilland DH-4 crashed at Wright Field shortly before the end of World War I. By March 1946 the base was under Air Materiel Command, and on January 13, 1948 it became Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The National Museum of the United States Air Force sits right next door.

The patch is cut in the shape of an arrowhead pointing right, 4 inches long and 2.25 inches tall, with a short squared tail at the back. A gold border runs around the whole outline, and the cut edge follows the shape closely. The field is navy blue twill, and WRIGHT is stitched in navy block letters on a gold bar across the center. There is no unit number, no motto and nothing else on it, only the name of the field. It has an iron-on backing and can also be sewn on.

Wright Field is where powered flight and military aviation share an address. The Wright brothers learned to fly on Huffman Prairie, and a generation later the Army's engineers were testing new aircraft on the field named for them. Huffman Prairie was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1990. For anyone who worked at Wright-Patt, from the Materiel Division days through Air Materiel Command and the modern Air Force, the single word WRIGHT needs no explanation. This patch carries that word the way the old-timers wore it.

Put it on a leather flight jacket, or in a shadow box with Army Air Forces and Air Force patches from your own career. It is a good gift for anyone who was stationed at Wright-Patt, worked on the base, or spends weekends at the museum next door. One word, one field, and the whole history of Dayton aviation behind it.