Heraldry In My Face

Well, not literally, but still ...  I've said many times that you can find heraldry everywhere.  The other day proved that you don't even have to go looking for it; sometimes, it will find you!\

I was driving to work the other morning, sitting in stop and go rush hour (boy, is that a misnomer!), and there, right in front of me, I saw this:

Now, I know, it's not the clearest picture.  Still, even for being taken on my camera phone during a momentary stop in the traffic flow, you can make out that it is a window decal of this:

That seal, and coat of arms, of the United States Air Force, which was established as its own arm of the armed forces of the U.S. in 1947 (hence the MCMXLVII in the legend around the seal).  Prior to that time, it was the U.S. Army Air Force, a branch of the U.S. Army.

The arms themselves are symbolic of the functions of the Air Force (both offensive and defensive), a winged thunderbolt spouting flames and lightning bolts in all directions in the middle of a clear blue sky above the clouds.  (Or, in blazon, or "herald-speak:" Bleu celeste a thunderbolt or a base nebuly argent.)

Anyway, it was all pretty neat to see bright and early in the morning, and made a nice (temporary) distraction from the "creep and go" traffic on my way to work that morning.

I Thought I Recognized That Shield!

Working at a law firm as I do, occasionally I'll see some correspondence or an envelope from another law firm which uses an heraldic-like device as a logo.  Recently, a letter came over my desk with the following:

It's okay as a design, I suppose, though it's not really heraldry.  And the motto on the scroll is, I suppose, a decent one for a law firm: "Truth overcomes all things."  Though Fairbairn's Crests gives the Latin for this motto, borne by the de Courcy, Eaton, Goodchild, and Laffan families, as Vincit omnia veritas, slightly different from the version here.  But vicit is "conquers" (also according to Fairbairn), so that part may be okay, too.  (But what do I know?  Putting on my best Dr. McCoy voice: "Dammit, Jim, I'm a herald, not a Latinist!")

Anyway, what really struck me about this logo was that the design of the shield and motto scroll looked familiar to me somehow.  So I pondered on it a little, and thought that I remembered where I'd seen it before.  I then dug through some of my photographs and depictions of heraldry from over the years and, sure enough, found what I had remembered.

This design is used frequently in the heraldic unit insignia of the United States Air Force.  Witness the following sampling of examples:

I don't know if the founder of the Loya Law Firm was ever in the Air Force, or whether the resemblance of his logo is a deliberate modeling of the design of much USAF heraldry, but I think you can see here why it just seemed "familiar" to me, somehow.  It's really a fairly distinctive shield and scroll shape combination.

Something Fun for Post Number 600

It's alway great when more than one of my interests intersect, and it seemed to me that this particular post, the 600th on this blog, was the ideal time to share with you a picture that was posted by Joseph Staub on the forum of the American Heraldry Society a few days ago.  And considering that it combined one of my loves, heraldry, with another of my loves, military aircraft, it was just too good to keep to myself.

And so. for your heraldic viewing pleasure, here's a photograph of a Czech fighter jet (I think it's a General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon) with what I can only consider to be a really cool, heraldic paint job!

The lion rampant on the aircraft is, of course, from the "small arms," the simpler, non-quartered coat of arms of the Czech Republic, shown here.

Another member of the AHS, Joseph McMillan, replied to a comment about how it wasn't really very well camouflaged, "It's in case the Czech Air Force ever has to deploy to the African veldt; the airplanes will blend in with the lions."

I hope that you will find this combination of heraldry and aviation as enjoyable as I have!

The Last Military Heraldry (That I Saw) in Virginia

We drove on out to the Cape Henry Lighthouse on the Atlantic shore in Virginia (actually, there are two lighthouses out there, the old original one and the new one; we were there to see the old one). I knew that there was a chance of seeing some heraldry – in addition to my belief that you can find heraldry everywhere, the lighthouse is, after all, on a military base – but I also knew that the chances of getting any good photographs of it were slim (the lighthouse is, after all, on a military base, and they’re awfully wary lately of people taking pictures willy-nilly).

However, I did get one. On the leading edge of the hood of a pickup truck (one of the larger Toyotas) in the parking lot for the old lighthouse was a sticker/decal with the arms of the U.S. Air Force Communications Command.

Not, to my mind, the best in heraldic design, it is nonetheless heraldry.  And sometimes you just have to be satisfied with that.