NASA Contractor Patches |
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During the peak years of activity on the Apollo program NASA's prime contractors for the construction of the Apollo Command Modules (North American Rockwell) and Lunar Modules (Grumman) employed thousands of people to work on these projects. In some cases the companies had embroidered patches produced as mementos for their employees. In other cases smaller teams within these companies had their own patches produced to commemorate the particular role they were playing in mankind's greatest adventure. Since these contractor patches were generally manufactured in small numbers and given exclusively to select groups of employees they are often both rare and highly sought by collectors today. Below I have tried to list some of the better known NASA contractor patches from the Apollo era as well as some of the rarer patches that are worth looking out for. These lists will doubtless be expanded as more patches are identified, so please feel free to contact me with details of any patches you feel should be included here. |
Grumman Embroidered Patches | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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North American Aviation Inc. / North American Rockwell embroidered patches | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
North American Aviation Inc. produced the Apollo Command/Service Modules and the second stage (S-II) of the Saturn V rocket.
After merging with Rockwell-Standard in 1967 (shortly after the Apollo 1 fire) the company became known as North American Rockwell.
The old NAA logo continued to be used for some time but patches bearing the NAA name probably date from early 1967 at the latest.
The company then became Rockwell International in 1973 so the NAR name was only in use from 1967 to 1973.
Below I detail some NAA & NAR patches directly related to the space program plus a fewmore generic company patches which were nevertheless used by people working on the Apollo program. |
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Chrysler Corporation Embroidered Patches | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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[1] Examples of Grumman logo patch sales: [2] Examples of Grumman text back patch sales: [3] Examples of Grumman Lunar Module patch sales: [4] Examples of Grumman Lunar Module KSC patch sales: [5] Examples of Grumman LM Ground Support patch sales: [6] Examples of Grumman Astronaut-Pilot Team patch sales: [7] Examples of Grumman LM-1 APOLLO-5 patch sales: [8] Examples of LM-3 patch sales: [9] Examples of Snoopy patch sales: [10] Examples of North American Aviation A&ID NASA Apollo Project patch sales: [11] Examples of North American Aviation Apollo CSM patch sales: [12] Examples of North American Aviation logo oversize patch sales: [13] Examples of North American Aviation logo patch sales: [14] Examples of North American Rockwell text back patch sales: [15] Examples of North American Rockwell logo & text back patch sales: [16] Examples of North American Rockwell logo patch sales: [17] Examples of North American Rockwell Apollo Launch Team patch sales: [18] Examples of Chrysler Saturn 1B patch sales: | ||