Part of collecting patches is the story behind the patch and the reason why it was designed in such a way. This is one of my favorites, got this info directly from the designer;
“The Footer patch”
The story behind it was that there were only a few pilots who worked on the wing-staff who actually worked directly under the Wing Commander (as opposed to the majority of the staff pilots, who worked under the D.O. … Deputy Commander for Operations, now called the Operations Group Commander). It happens that the D.O. was really, basically a jerk, and seemed to resent the pilots and WSO’s (who didn’t work for him) flying “his airplanes”. The Phantom drivers and WSO’s certainly didn’t like him nor the way he treated them (basically only allowed us the minimum required flying sorties, as well as “making” them fly half their sorties in Osan AB (with the 36 TFS Fiends), and the other half down at Taegu AB with the other squadron, the 497 TFS Hooters … fun, but 160 miles away, so pretty inconvenient So, as a pretty obvious bit of informal “protest”, the guys designed this patch, obviously combining both the Fiends and Hooters, and thus the name: 36 Fiends + 497 Hooters = “533 Footers”. And the “CMQFTS” was a further slight: “Combined Mission Qualification Fighter Training Squadron”, rather than just Tactical Fighter Squadon. Guess you basically needed to be there to fully appreciate this, but I’m sure you get the point. They only wore it on their flight suits briefly … the D.O. tolerated it until he understood the meaning behind it, then they were forbidden to wear it.
Story via Mike Steadman
