Unknown US Badge
 

Hi all,

I bought the attached badge a few months ago and haven't been able to determine exactly what it is. It has the makers mark 'N S Meyer Inc New York' on the reverse and 'Ballou Reg'd' on the butterfly clasps.

I've had a good Google around about the badge - I found this unresolved Reddit Post that suggested it might be an 'Aviation Warfare Systems Operator' badge. I found an example here and whilst they are similar, they're not identical.

Does anyone have any thoughts about what this badge may be? Many thanks for your time.

Stumps me! I've tried to find it under nuclear, atomic, space, etc. but no luck,

Terry

Hi Terry - I know what you mean, the best results I found on Google were similar, but never the same. Whilst I loosely connected it to the Navy, a lot of the insignia I found were in silver as opposed to gold. Do you know if there is a connection between the colour of a badge and the service it belongs to?

Typically Army and Navy insignia are gold and Air Force insignia are silver. But, I cannot say for sure that would always be the case.

The style of the wings and having the atom emblem on your badge imply that it is fairly current, but that is really just assumption on my part.

Terry

It might not be from USA. Meyer made a lot of badges for various South American countries as well. I have collected US badges for quite a while and I have never seen this one.

With regard to the question on colour versus arm of service, it is actually quite complicated. In general the air force use silver, the army use gold and the navy use both (silver for enlisted ranks and gold for officers). However there are exceptions to these generalisations. You also then have to contend with a whole range of other non military agencies with similar looking badges. All good fun !