2 new patches. Tigers. Aviation?

[irish]

Here are 2 patches with tiger designations. I think they are aviation, has anyone seen these before or know what unit they might belong to. The smaller tigers patch had a designation noted by the manufacturer which you can see shaded in. F- ? something and then again the word Tigers. For whatever resason they dropped the F- designation and just went with tigers. Thanks

[F 106 Pilot]

The blue patch was for the F-5 aircraft and the Young Tiger has to do with Air Refueling during the Vietnam War hope this helps. Ben.

[irish]

Thanks Ben, I have looked into the F-5 and it has a tiger connection. In Vietnam the the F-5 squadron at Bien Hoa was referred to as the 'Skoshi Tigers" so this may be a direction for me to look.

[Johnny Signor]

They also had both single place and dual place "Tigers" there , so your blue patch is probably for the two seat F-5 Tiger .

Johnny

[irish]

Thanks Johnny, the F-5 seems to fit. Here is another tiger piece which came from the same group of patches. While Skoshi in Japanese means small I am unsure if this Little Tiger designation fits the "Skoshi Tiger" model. But more than coincidence

 

[Johnny Signor]

Your "Little Tiger" could be one of the "Mission" patches like the Young Tiger one .

Johnny

[34Rangers]

On 5/29/2011 at 3:47 AM, irish said:

Thanks Johnny, the F-5 seems to fit. Here is another tiger piece which came from the same group of patches. While Skoshi in Japanese means small I am unsure if this Little Tiger designation fits the "Skoshi Tiger" model. But more than coincidence

 

This is a patch worn by the Thai U.N. Forces who were deployed to Korea.

[Randy]

Skoshi Tiger was the original USAF F-5A combat evaluation program at Williams AFB in 1965, with the aircraft deploying to SVN later that year. This was to develop a smaller, easily maintainable fighter for allied air forces. The original 4503rd TFS Skoshi Tiger patch is attached. While in SVN the unit was designated the 10th Fighter Squadron, Commando. The OP pic above with two tigers is for the later F-5E aircraft, the Tiger II, hence the two  tiger heads. Nothing to do with the two-place aircraft. The F-5 went on to be a very sucessful export to almost 20 different air forces while also being utilized as aggressors with the USAF and Navy.

 

Randy