F-35B Military Aviation T-Shirts and Personalized Tumblers

There is a particular kind of person this gear is for. The Marine who worked the flight line at Yuma or Beaufort and still knows the sound. The crew chief who can tell you what the lift fan doors look like from underneath. The kid who stood at the fence line at an airshow and watched one come down vertically and has not shut up about it since.

Two pieces, both built around the same original artwork: a military aviation t-shirt and a personalized tumbler. Here they are, and then a short explanation of what is actually happening in the picture.

The F-35B military aviation t-shirt

The F-35B Lightning II shirt is a front print on a Bella + Canvas 3001, 12 colors, XS to 4XL with a 5XL in white, $24.99. The centre jet is head-on with its gear down, sitting on a column of exhaust with deck smoke rolling out from under it. Two more sit on their own plumes either side, one climbs away top left, and a planform view fills the top right. F-35B LIGHTNING II runs across the top in brushed chrome over a U.S. MARINE CORPS star bar.

12 Colors, XS to 4XL
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Which colour. Black is where the chrome lettering does the most work — the metallic highlights were drawn against a dark ground, so they read as metal rather than as grey ink. Military green is the pick if you want it to look like it came off a flight line instead of out of a print shop. White throws the red backdrop forward and is the loudest of the three. Aqua is the odd one that works better than it should.

Printed on Bella + Canvas 3001
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The personalized F-35B tumbler

The personalized F-35B tumbler wraps the same artwork around 20 ounces of insulated stainless steel, in white, silver or black, $28.99 — with a line underneath for whatever you want printed on it.

That line is what turns it from a gift into the gift. A rank and name. A squadron. A station. A call sign. A date someone finished twenty years. The wrap stays the same; the line is yours.

White, Silver or Black
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Silver looks least like a printed object — brushed steel and chrome headline sit in the same register, so the artwork reads as part of the cup. Black is the flight-line thermos. White throws the hardest contrast and is the easiest to read a custom line on from across a room.

Add Your Own Text
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Not sure what to put on the line? The walkthrough on what goes on a USMC tumbler covers rank abbreviations, the slash notation and how much text actually fits.

What is actually happening in the picture

Worth knowing, because it is the reason the design looks the way it does rather than being just another jet on a shirt.

That centre aircraft is not taking off. It is hovering, gear down, held up by a column of its own thrust. The F-35B is the only one of the three F-35 variants that can do it, and it is the Marine Corps’ aircraft specifically. Behind the cockpit sits a 50-inch fan, spun by a driveshaft off the engine, blowing straight down. At the back, the engine’s own nozzle swivels to point at the deck. Together they put out more than 40,000 pounds of downward thrust, and the pilot engages the whole arrangement with one button.

The reason the Corps wanted it: Marines do not fight from runways. They fight from amphibious ships and short strips, and an aircraft that needs a prepared runway is no use to them there. The first squadron to fly it operationally — VMFA-121 at Yuma, in July 2015 — was the first F-35 squadron of any variant, in any air force in the world, to be declared ready for combat. The Marines got there first because they needed it most.

It costs them something. The fan eats the space that holds fuel on the other variants, so the B has the shortest legs of the three, a smaller weapons bay, and no gun built into the airframe. Worth it, in their judgement, for being able to land on a ship.

If you want the full version — the lift fan in detail, how it differs from the Harrier, and what separates the A, the B and the C — it is in the companion piece on what the three F-35 variants actually are.

More military aviation shirts and gifts

The F-35B pair sits alongside an F-35A blueprint tee and an F-22 Raptor tee on the Air Force side, each with a matching personalized tumbler.

By branch, they live in Marine Corps apparel and Air Force shirts and gifts. Everything with a custom line on it is in personalized Marine Corps gifts and personalized military tumblers. For something that names the service rather than the airframe, start with the veteran shirts.

Anything AF isn’t affiliated with the U.S. Marine Corps, the Department of Defense or any aircraft manufacturer. Every graphic here is original artwork drawn in-house.

Sources: the U.S. Marine Corps announcement that the F-35B was declared operational, and Rolls-Royce’s description of the LiftSystem that gives it STOVL capability.