All About Wing Commander Patches! (March 1, 2020)

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
Since everyone is now an expert on space patches I thought it might be fun to share a thread of the prop ones made for Wing Commander! This first one is used on all of the uniforms in Wing Commander III:





It’s called the ‘combined forces’ emblem because it was worn during the war by all branches of the Confederation military: marines, army, space navy and, yes, space force. It also had a blink-and-you-miss it cameo in the Wing Commander movie!





Wing Commander IV updates this to the post-war ‘Unified Space Command’ patch. They also designed new patches for the Union of Border Worlds and the Black Lance which appear as loyalties shift!





Wing Comnander Prophecy continues to use the USC patch and adds these unit emblems for the Midway’s fighter wings. These only appear on the leather bomber jackets that are occasionally worn between missions.





Three unit patches (Tiger Claw, Concordia and Pegasus) and a general Confed star show up in the movie. The physical props are printed on a thin martial that’s more like those worn by the Apollo astronauts on the moon than standard embroidered military patches.





There was also a tradition of awarding the game developers unit patches for the projects they worked on. The Privateer 2 patch was also sold to the public in deluxe editions of the game.





Not quite patches but also great, the movie had nose art designed for each character’s fighter. (Bossman’s Rapier used the wing logo.)





The Confederation Handbook also has a few fun emblems inspired by the movie patches:





The CCG has squadron logos for 80 different human and Kilrathi squadrons. Too many to share here but you can find every card scanned at ccg.jetlag.us





The ‘team shirt’ for the CCG has one and it adds a bit of cool lore, too (a marine unit?!) I own this one because it was left over after Mark Hamill didn’t want to wear it at Gencon in 1996!





The Wing Commander Academy (game) team got a cool emblem shirt too... designed by the late, great Paul Steed. Finding one of these is one of my big collecting grails!





The other Wing Commander Academy has shoulder patches too but there’s no visible detail. Easy cosplay option though!





That’s it for Wing Commander patches! Shout out to this book for making me OBSESSED with real space patches as a kid.




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Original update published on March 1, 2020
 
There's bootlegs on eBay that are probably pretty decent:




 
The following showed up in a Facebook group recently related to the F-14 Tomcat, which fits given squadrons used a triangular patch style this particular item mimics. Never noticed it in WC3, figured it was perhaps a prop item.
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That's pretty cool! It's obviously an Excalibur... but was there any more context from the original poster? How they came to acquire it?
 
I can confirm this isn't a prop from any of the full motion video shoots. My best guess would be that it's a vintage fan made patch. The love of the Excalibur combined with the fact that it's a direct reference to a real F-14 squadron suggests it's something out of the 1996-97 Wing Commander Ace's Club.
 
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