Jump to content

A Southern Air Transport Desert Shield/Desert Storm patch


Patchcollector
 Share

Recommended Posts

Patchcollector

Hi everyone,

This just arrived today.A Desert Shield/Desert Storm Southern Air Transport piece.I don't have any SAT stuff and thought this was pretty cool so I picked it up.

 

 

post-13386-0-57767800-1398132723.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This patch belongs to a government Contractor "Southern Air Transport". They helped airlift operations during Operations Desert Shield / Desert Storm.

 

Mark

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Government contractor" is a bit of an understatement. At one time it was owned by the CIA.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Air_Transport

 

"During the Desert Shield and Desert Storm operations, SAT's accomplishments became legendary. Both the company and the participating crewmembers received performance awards as members of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet from a grateful U.S. Air Force."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

(Another Story)

 

Reminds me of an incident at Travis years ago when I was riding with the Pro Super (Flight Line Production Supervisor) on one of the taxiways. This Southern Air L-100 (C-130) was taxiing across the front of us then all of a sudden turned towards us last minute without stopping. It scared the hell out of us as the MSgt I was riding with rapidly put the truck in reverse and backed right onto the grass! We couldn't believe it as the plane just wizzed right past us without even a tap on the brakes. We found out later that the "pilot" was actually another Pro Super from midshift who also worked for Southern Air as a second job. When I ran into him the next morning, he asked about losing a game of chicken with a L-100 with a chuckle. I didn't think it was funny at all. The vision of propeller blades cutting into the cab of the truck was not exactly hilarious.

 

-Ski

Link to comment
Share on other sites

flashesandovals

"Government contractor" is a bit of an understatement. At one time it was owned by the CIA.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Air_Transport

 

"During the Desert Shield and Desert Storm operations, SAT's accomplishments became legendary. Both the company and the participating crewmembers received performance awards as members of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet from a grateful U.S. Air Force."

 

Very interesting - never heard about that!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Patchcollector

Actually,both Mark and GWB are correct.They are "Government contracted" and also did have ties to the CIA,at one time actually being "openly" owned by the CIA.They became famous(or should I say notorious)during the Reagan era when one of their planes was shot down in Central America.

Here are the details:

On October 5, 1986 Nicaragua shot down a SAT C-123K, Corporate Air Services HPF821, formerly USAF 54-679 (c/n 20128), cargo plane with a Soviet-supplied, shoulder-launched heat-seeking missile and captured the cargo handler, a SAT employee Eugene Hasenfus, exposing the Iran-Contra affair. Two other crew were killed.

They are now known as Southern Air and I'm not sure if they are still working with the CIA.

I have a "SAT" story of my own,not as exciting as Ski's tale though!

During the late 80's when I was at Charleston AFB,I saw the SAT planes there.They were more or less a permanent fixture,and kept busy coming and going,probably to Central America,as that was the "hot spot" back then.

Here is a photo of the type of A/C I used to see,the same type Ski saw.

 

post-13386-0-01605800-1398261811.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
Patchcollector

Recently I was able to add to my Southern Air Transport collection so I wanted to post my new finds here.

post-13386-0-41346200-1401542944.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 years later...

Here is a Southern Air Transport patch from my personal collection. It is sewn directly onto a shirt and has the name Kevin sewn onto the other side.

74664517_10156509960221129_1274880244892827648_n.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 years later...

Know this is an older thread and this isn’t a patch but I recently came into ownership of this SAT keychain in the shape of a C-130 or similar variant craft. 

90B1A55D-512E-41E2-A477-41684109B97B.jpeg

E7CAC77C-88C2-4FA9-9E0E-76FDE94BC30E.jpeg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...