MTB Ron 23

Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 23 (MTB Ron 23) — "PT Boat Patrol Torpedo" · USN · 1943-1945

Commissioned 28 June 1943 at the Higgins Industrial Canal plant in New Orleans, Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 23 took its Higgins-built PT boats — 241-244 and 277-288 — into the South Pacific under LCDR Ronald K. Irving, running night patrols that cut Japanese barge supply lines off Bougainville and Green Island. In December 1944 the squadron shifted to the Southwest Pacific, operating from Mios Woendi in New Guinea and Mindoro before seeing action at Palawan in the Philippines, and was decommissioned 26 November 1945. This rare US-made deck-jacket patch answers the squadron's mission with a wartime Warner Bros. rabbit — Bugs Bunny — straddling a red torpedo across a moonlit sea, the squadron's yellow "23" thrown up in its wake. Its lettering, "PT Boat Patrol Torpedo," was the crews' own gloss on the designation they wore into the dark.