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Antique white premium slub cotton sweatshirt with authentic 1940's WWII US Navy Hornet design.
Originally the Disney insignia designed for VF-72, the Hornet design also saw action in Korea and Vietnam becoming one of the unofficial insignias for the USS Hornet.
The Hornet was regularly deployed to the 7th Fleet for operations ranging from the coast of South Vietnam, to the shores of Japan, the Philippines and Okinawa; and she also played a key part in the Apollo Program, as a recovery ship for unmanned and manned spaceflights.
On 25 August 1966, she was on recovery station for the flight of AS-202, the second unmanned flight of a production Command Module. The moonship rocketed three-quarters of the way around the globe in 93 minutes before splashdown near Wake Island. Scorched from the heat of its re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, the Apollo space capsule, designed to carry American astronauts to the moon, was brought aboard Hornet after its test; that command module is currently on display aboard Hornet.
During World War II, Disney had its artists draw up roughly 1,200 insignias for the U.S. military, many for Naval units. After Mickey Mouse rode a goose in a patch for a Naval Reserve squadron stationed at Floyd Bennett Field in New York, the illustrations became illustrious among units and inspired Naval artists to recreate the magic, designing their own logos in the Disney style. Their popularity can be attributed to their humorous quality, which gave sailors a sense of nostalgia rather than being typically military logos.
As incongruous as Disney characters are to the horrors of war, these cartoon military patches embodied pop culture, innocence, American values, and everything the troops loved about home—a much more fitting emblem than a heraldic pompous symbol with no sentimental significance. Disney had to dedicate five artists to the task on a full-time basis because of the volume of requests by units for logos. Almost every Disney character was used in the project— except Bambi. By far the most requested figure was Donald Duck.


