From the earliest days of World War 2 and with the final unconditional surrender of the Japanese Empire in Tokyo Harbor in 1945 the US Navy deployed the destroyer. Just one reason it was absolutely necessary to create a Tin Can Sailor challenge coin for our US Navy’s best.
The destroyer was home to their Tin Can Sailors and their destroyers is where they waged their war in the South Pacific. These little greyhounds of the seas raced along with merchant shipping in conveys protecting them from German U-Boats
or fired depth charges against Japanese submarines destroying them in the depths. Their 5 inch gun mounts were used to bombard beaches in preparation of US Marine landings and much more.
Tin Can Sailors were coined based on their role sailing aboard, working below the decks and packed in like sardines into what would affectionately be used to term them as Tin Can Sailors. The US Navy destroyers were their tin cans and they spent their days sailing and fighting.
Gunboats turned Missile Destroyers
We don’t have horse and buggies anymore. We have Toyota’s, Tesla’s, and Ferrari’s and in some case Lamborghini’s. Suffice to say we no longer drive the old combustion engines akin to a gunboat like a 1970’s muscle car that could hurl itself down a highway but now have the missile destroyers and the age of hitting an enemy from over the horizon. Welcome the Arleigh Burke US Navy destroyer and gone is the gun boat and hello missile destroyer. Sure we still call the Arleigh Burke Sailors Tin Can Sailors but that is a terms originally placed on the gunboats Sailors from a different age.
Because of the huge importance of the US Navy with its historical US Navy destroyers and Tin Can Sailors to the modern day missile destroyer we knew at Navy Crow the importance of commemorating the Tin Can Sailors with a US Navy challenge coin that would keep these terms, traditions and histories alive. As a result we built 2 legendary Tin Can Sailor challenge coins. One coin representing the past and one with a more modern lens that looks at the modern age of the Tin Can Sailor.
