Dating black & brown US Navy leather name tag wing patches

[Siamundo]

Just curious if anyone knows if there is a hard and fast rule when it comes to dating a US Navy leather name/wings patch? I have seen both brown and black versions with gold embossed names, wings, and ranks and was wanting to know if one or another dates to a certain era or vintage, or are the different colors interchangeable. Specifically, I was trying to date this black leather patch which is sewn to an olive drab garment bag. I have no information about this pilot. The bag is a very heavy nylon type material but it appears to be custome made or private purchase and there are no markings or labels in the bag. Thank you very much!

[KASTAUFFER]

John Peter Fox was a Lt Cdr in 1950 so this tag post dates that. I'd say your tag was from the mid 50's.

 

Kurt

[Siamundo]

Wow, Kurt, thank you very much! That is great information. I do appreciate it.

[VP_Association]

I don't think you can judge the age of a Navy leather flight suit or flight jacket nametag by its color.

 

I flew P-3s in the Navy and Naval Air Reserve between 1980 and 1999. In my day the squadron parachute lofts typically stocked both black and brown leather name tag material and what color you got was pretty much your choice. Normally we put the black nametags on flight suits and CWU type flight jackets and we put the brown name tags on leather G-1 flight jackets and the WEP type jackets but like I said above the choice of color was normally up to the person who ordered the nametag.

 

In later years nametags were often provided in colored naugahyde vinyl material in the squadron's color. For example, VP-MAU Brunswick issued nametags in blue and VP-10 issued them in red. I remember seeing other colors, such as yellow, etc., in use by other squadrons. In recent years the fashion has been to use fancy embroidered fabric nametags that feature the squadron's insignia or tail flash.

 

 

Ordering name tags was normally a pretty uncomplicated process, though I seem to remember on at least one occasion during the Clinton budget cuts when money was tight in the squadron being told that I could not get one. You just went over to the parachute loft and told the PR or AME on duty that you wanted x number of nametags in whatever color available that you wanted. You wrote down on a piece of paper the lines of text you wanted on the nametag, the type of wing or other insignia (the maintenence people and other "ground pounders" could order nametags too with their rating insignia on them instead of wings for their jackets and coveralls) that you wanted, velcro or no velcro on the back (ones without velcro were sewn directly on leather jackets), and eventually they'd get made. Typically the parachute loft made up nametags as filler work when there wasn't anything else going on. Most of the time the work was done overnight. Sometimes it might take a few weeks or longer to have nametags made up if there was a lot of other work being done, such as preparation for a deployment. We would often bring a six pack of beer to the parachute loft as a bribe to get prompt service.

 

I turned up early for my P-3 class to start at NAS Jacksonville and was temporarily assigned to the VP-30 parachute loft for a couple of weeks. I had no interest in learning how to sew (something I regret today) and so they had me do all kinds of other things such as inspecting oxygen bottles on aircraft, ensuring that life vests had all the proper equipment (I ate a lot of Charms candy while I was doing this), and they showed me how to use the name tag machine and for a time I was the guy who made name tags. Getting the gold foil to lay on to the leather correctly took some trial and error and after ruining quite a few nametags I eventually got the hang of it.

 

The embroidered fabric nametags were purchased through the squadron geedunk. You had to pay for them. I don't remember what they cost but it wasn't much. You filled out a form, paid in advance, and they were provided by an outside vendor within a couple of weeks.

 

If you look under the wings section you'll see a thread I started some time ago that has images of some of my name tags and I think perhaps one or two of my USN veteran wife's too.

[kammo-man]

That's a great post !

Thanks

Owen

[Bebel]

Thank you very much for all these appreciated informations.

 

I have some leather name tags from the same pilot who served from ww2 to 60s. All are different: black and brown, size, letters type, ...

 

I really don't think that we could determine the period of such tags.

 

Franck