When I got to the museum on Monday, the 29th, I entered Brians office to check in and see what he has for me, as I usually do. There he told me to head up to and unlock the library and then over the the “multipurpose room” and meet with Vivienne. There I was supposed to work with her on the patch wall project. This task I would work on until July 20th. The day I finish writing this blogpost, and also likely at least a little bit in the following weeks as well.
The Patch Wall is an “exhibit” in the museum on a wall right behind the lobby. It is a set of 52 patches surrounded by a block of text that is supposed to inform visitors about the concept of patches. Rather than give information about the specific patches on display. It was put up in a hurry and not necessarily the most well done. The new exhibit is supposed to tell visitors about the patches we have on display, rather than general information about military patches and their colors.
To facilitate this new exhibit, we have to gather information about the patches we have. Which unit it belongs to and its function. Vivienne had already done much of this work by the time I was assigned to help. But there were still enough left over that I got to do 7 of them. Researching the patches wasn’t too difficult. All I needed was a primary source about the unit and what it does. A quick search on Google led to an official USAF website most of the time. Which the Armament Museum is allowed to use the information from no questions asked due to it being a Department of War (formerly Department of Defense) owned museum.
However, there were still a handful that neither of us were able to find reliable information on. For those, we asked for the help of Eglin Air Force Base historian Alan Landers. Fortunately for us he was able to find the time to come over to the museum and meet with us to discuss said unknown units. Alan was helpful, though he wasn’t able to fill us in on every unit we needed information for, on some of them he said we could just copy the information from a similar unit. For example; the 96th Operations Support Squadron and the 46th Operations Support Squadron would perform the same role, but for their respective wing. From there we would move on to the next part, gathering photos of the patches and assembling the information together.
Armament Internship 