Apollo 16

When they stepped out of the recovery helicopter onto the deck of the U.S.S. Ticonderoga the Apollo 16 crew were wearing blue jumpsuits with an embroidered mission patch attached.

The same patches are visible on their jumpsuits in photos taken during later during the cake-cutting ceremony onboard the ship. The closeup images above show the details of the patch taken from two of these photos.

Originally I had considered that these patches were almost certainly the regular AB Emblem versions as AB were the offical supplier to NASA at the time and the designs appeared to match the standard AB patch based on the images available to me. Any subtle differences in appearance could be put down to lighting conditions.

However, some time ago keen patch collector Colin Burgess (not the author) came across a bare cloth back Apollo 16 patch which was apparently the regular AB Emblem design but with distinctly darker grey thread used in the details of the background of the patch.

He sent me photos of the Apollo 16 patch on John Young's jacket on display in the Astronaut Hall of Fame, FL which appeared to be of the same style, noted that it matched an Apollo 16 flown patch that was sold by Young at Heritage in 2009, and suggested that the patches worn by the crew on their flight suits after the recovery were of the same design.

Thanks to RetroSpaceImages I now have much clearer high resolution photos of the Apollo 16 crew post-flight to examine, and I am now convinced that Colin was right. The crew were indeed wearing this distinct variant of the Apollo 16 patch on their flight suits.

It's not clear whether this was a distinct early run of the AB Emblem patch distributed to NASA only, or whether, like the Apollo 13 crew patch, this version of the patch was also sold to the public for a certain time before the regular version replaced it.

Whatever the case, I believe that this patch variant qualifies as a Crew Patch for the Apollo 16 mission.

The patch seems to be very uncommon, as I have only seen four examples offered in the best part of a year and three of these came from the same source. That said, perhaps once it is recognized as a crew patch more examples will surface.

One thing collectors need to be wary of is the later plastic-backed AB Emblem patches, some of which use a fairly dark thread in the background which makes them resemble the original crew patches. Examples of this style are fairly common in Willabee & Ward collections.

I have to thank Colin Burgess for researching this patch and bringing it to my attention.