[Llarry]

My earlier post on the Jolly Rogers prompted me to look a bit into another famous U.S. Navy fighter/strike fighter squadron: The Tophatters. The lineage is not direct as squadrons were disestablished and established (during World War II the U.S. Navy had something like 150 fighter squadrons at one time or another!)

The Tophatters of today have their origins in what was originally called the High Hat squadron: Fighter Squadron ONE (VF-1). The first photo is a Boeing F2B-1 of VF-1 in the 1920s. The squadron was disestablished before WW2. In 1943, a new VF-1 assumed the High Hat tradition and flew the Grumman F6F Hellcat in combat, scoring 101 victories in three combat tours. (My Dad was very briefly assigned to VF-1 in 1944 as a replacement pilot.) Note that the High Hat insignia below the windscreen is pretty small; that was all that was allowed during the War.

I won't bore you with all the postwar changes, but let me close with two more photos -- an F-14A of 1975 and a more recent F/A-18. Post-WW2 the name morphed into the Tophatters and that is how they are known today.