Offered is an original WW2 era Eagle Squadron uniform patch.
The patch shows the american eagle, with letter E.S. above, on mothed RAF blue cotton, all on rough cream backing, with hand ink dedication 'Love From Malcolm, In memory of many happy hours'. Measures 55mm x 57mm. Perhaps this was a sweet heart present?
The Eagle Squadrons were three fighter squadrons of the Royal Air Force (RAF) formed with volunteer pilots from the United States during the early days of World War II (circa 1940), prior to America's entry into the war in December 1941.
With the United States still neutral, many Americans simply crossed the border and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) to learn to fly and fight. Many early recruits had originally gone to Europe to fight for Finland against the Soviet Union in the Winter War. Some had been rejected by the United States Army Air Corps as "lacking in intrinsic flying ability".Charles Sweeny, a wealthy businessman living in London, began recruiting American citizens to fight as a US volunteer detachment in the French Air Force, echoing the Lafayette Escadrille of World War I. Following the Fall of France in 1940, a dozen of these recruits joined the RAF. Sweeny's efforts were also coordinated in Canada by the World War I air ace Billy Bishop and the artist Clayton Knight, who formed the Clayton Knight Committee, which by the time the United States entered the war, had processed and approved 6,700 applications from Americans to join the RCAF or RAF. Sweeny and his rich society contacts bore the cost (over $100,000) of processing and sending the men to the United Kingdom for training.
