An early Vietnam War era First Air Commando Alpha Det patch

[Patchcollector]

Happy Friday all,
Here is a recent find; an incountry made piece for the 2A Det of the 1st Air Commando.

According to the seller,this is an "original patch from a run of 200 made in August 1962 for the A-26 Invader element of the Farm Gate Program which operated from Bien Hoa AB, South Vietnam."

The patch is an older piece,very well made.The lightning bolt running through the center is thickly embroidered,and feels "3D".

[Patchcollector]

Back view

[River Patrol]

I would like to know how the seller gained this information on the patch run. What hard evidence do they have?

 

EBF shows up on some early Air Force patches....Do you know what it means? The first letter is a compass direction.......

[Der Finn]

The second letter stands for "bum".

[firefighter]

East

Bum

F****

 

It's called the ZAP patch.

 

Here is the history of the patch.: http://home.earthlink.net/~aircommando1/Zapatch1.html

[vietvet7071]

Beautiful insignia and great history.

[nguoi tien su]

I really don't think that this one is one of the early produced. This machine made embroidery is not what you see on the 1962/1964 USAF patches.

[Patchcollector]

Hard to say.The seller that I bought this from consistently offers top shelf,hard to find Air Force pieces,and he usually has very detailed background info that he adds with his patches.When he sent me the patch he included an article from "Air Commando" magazine that had info on the patches' origin.

[firefighter]

I really don't think that this one is one of the early produced. This machine made embroidery is not what you see on the 1962/1964 USAF patches.

 

I have one just like PC's but I think you are right, the early one were hand embroidered. Not sure if they were made after the initial batch was used up or war era 'made for collector' patch?

[Randy]

I have to agree, this one looks to have been made later than the early 60s.

 

Randy

I really don't think that this one is one of the early produced. This machine made embroidery is not what you see on the 1962/1964 USAF patches.

 

[Patchcollector]

As I stated earlier,my info came from the patch seller.The only thing I know for certain is that the patch is authentic wartime made.I'm just happy to have a real one in my collection,as the machine made examples are also tough to find