Robert Halley Wertheim
Painting of Rear Admiral Robert H. Wertheim, USN
Rear Admiral Robert H. Wertheim, USN
Nickname(s)Bob[1]
Born(1922-11-09)9 November 1922
Carlsbad, New Mexico, United States
Died29 April 2020(2020-04-29) (aged 97)
Buried
Miramar National Cemetery
AllegianceUnited States
Service/branchUnited States Navy
Years of service1942–1980
RankRear Admiral
Commands heldUnited States Navy Strategic Systems Project Office[2]
Battles/warsWorld War II:
Awards
Alma mater
Spouse(s)Barbara (1946–2001)
Joan
Children2

Robert "Bob" Wertheim (9 November 1922 – 29 April 2020) was an American naval officer involved in the development of strategic weapons. Senator Robert Byrd described him as "the Navy's leading authority on strategic missiles".[3]

Born and raised in New Mexico, Wertheim attended the New Mexico Military Institute before appointment to the United States Naval Academy. He graduated in time to join in the occupation of Japan. Returning to the United States, Wertheim began a long involvement in missile development, including work on the Regulus cruise missile, Polaris ballistic missile, Chaparral anti-aircraft missile, Poseiden ballistic missile, and Trident ballistic missile. During his time working on missile development, he graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After retiring from the United States Navy as a rear admiral (upper half), he was a senior vice president at Lockheed Corporation, and engaged in consulting work.

Early life

Robert Halley Wertheim was born to Joseph Wertheim and Emma Vorenberg in Carlsbad, New Mexico on 9 November 1922.[4][lower-alpha 1] Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, he enrolled into the New Mexico Military Institute;[1] graduating in 1942. He received an appointment to the United States Naval Academy.[10][11][lower-alpha 2] At the Naval Academy, he competed on the school's fencing team.[13] He graduated with honors in 1945,[1][14] and he was commissioned as an ensign upon graduation as part of an accelerated wartime program.[4]

Military service

Following his graduation from the Naval Academy, Wertheim's first assignment was on the destroyer USS Hyman, on which he participated in the occupation of Japan.[11] Transferred to the destroyer USS Bordelon at Okinawa, he served as the ship's assistant engineering officer and communications officer, before being sent to San Francisco to attend electronics school.[11] Upon completing electronics school, Wertheim was assigned to the destroyer escort USS Maloy, which spent the winter of 1947 providing electricity to Maine.[11]

Following his assignment to Maloy, Wertheim was reassigned to Sandia Base, where he was a member of the Navy's first nuclear bomb assembly team.[13] he wished to study nuclear physics, but was due for a sea assignment; accordingly, he selected the seaplane tender USS Norton Sound, which was used to test guided missiles.[11] In 1954, Wertheim enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning a master's degree in nuclear physics.[1] That same year, he was detailed to the heavy cruiser USS Los Angeles while it had SSM-N-8 Regulus missiles embarked.[11] As a lieutenant in 1955, Wertheim headed the group that worked on the design of the atmospheric reentry body of the warheads mounted onto the UGM-27 Polaris.[15]: 53 [16] In June 1956, Wertheim was assigned to the United States Navy Special Projects Office, originally part of the Bureau of Ordnance, where he stayed until June 1961. During that time he continued the work he began in 1955, heading the Re-Entry Body Section, receiving the Navy Commendation Medal for his efforts.[4]

After assignment to the Special Projects Office, Wertheim was assigned to the Naval Ordnance Test Station in California from 1961 to 1962.[4] While there, he worked on the development of the AIM-9 Sidewinder for naval surface air defense, called Osprey, which was ultimately cancelled in 1963; he was able to take that work and utilize it for the Army and Marine Corps Air Defense Artillery, including influencing the naming of the system, the MIM-72 Chaparral,[4][11][17] Chaparral being the name for a roadrunner in Mexican Spanish, the state bird for Wertheim's home state.[11][17]

In late 1962, Wertheim was reassigned to the Pentagon, serving under the Director of Defense Research and Engineering Dr. Harold Brown, whom he had met while working on the Polaris missile.[11] That same year, Wertheim was tasked with writing a report for the United States that advocated for the adoption of the Polaris missile by the United Kingdom instead of the continuing to develop independently the cancelled GAM-87 Skybolt.[18][lower-alpha 3] Wertheim remained at the Pentagon as the Military Assistant for Strategic Weapons until August 1965, which earned him a Joint Service Commendation Medal.[4] During those years, he was instrumental in having the Strategic Projects Office increase the UGM-73 Poseidon's targeting accuracy by switching the missile's guidance system from only inertial to stellar-inertial guidance.[15]: 53–54  He returned to the Special Projects Office in Washington, D.C. in late 1965.[4]

In 1971, Wertheim was elevated to the rank of rear admiral.[11] That year, he was awarded the Rear Admiral William S. Parsons Award by the Navy League of the United States.[11] At some point in his career, before 1974, Wertheim attended and graduated from the Naval Postgraduate School.[20][lower-alpha 4] In 1977, he was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering,[21][lower-alpha 5] and he became the Director of the Strategic Systems Projects.[4][lower-alpha 6] In April 1979, Senator Robert Byrd said that Wertheim "is the Navy's leading authority on strategic missiles";[3] in addition to work on the Polaris and Poseidon missiles, Wertheim had also made significant contributions to the development of the Trident missile family.[1][4][13] In October 1979, Wertheim was awarded the Navy Distinguished Service Medal.[24]

Post-military life

For seven years, beginning in 1981, Wertheim was the senior vice president of science and engineering of Lockheed Corporation.[1][11][25] In 1983, along with several other dozen retired flag officers, Wertheim took out a full-page advertisement in the Washington Times condemning retired Rear Admiral Gene La Rocque for appearing on Soviet Union television and himself condemning the defense policy of the United States.[26] In 1987, the New Mexico Military Institute inducted Wertheim into their hall of fame.[10] Beginning in 1988, Wertheim became a private consultant with Science Applications International Corporation.[13] He also did consulting work with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, United States Department of Defense, and the Draper Laboratory.[1] In 2000, on behalf of the University of California, Wertheim was the lead of a review of Los Alamos National Laboratory after hard drives temporarily went missing.[27] Wertheim was a member of Sigma Xi and Tau Beta Pi.[25]

Personal life and retirement

In April 1946, Wertheim became engaged to Barbara Louis Selig of West Los Angeles;[28] they married in December 1946.[4] Barbara gave birth and was the mother of their children Joseph and David.[29] In 2001, Barbara, Wertheim's wife of 54 years, died.[1] In 2005, the alumni association of the Naval Academy awarded Wertheim their Distinguished Graduate Award Medal.[30][lower-alpha 7] By 2005, Wertheim had remarried, to Joan Levin.[1][31] In 2005, Wertheim spoke to The New Mexico Jewish Historical Society.[32] The next year, he was given the Distinguished Submariner Award by the Naval Submarine League.[33] In 2008, Wertheim was a member of the Defense Science Board's Permanent Task Force on Nuclear Weapons Surety.[34] In 2012, his son Joseph died in Pittsburgh.[29][35][lower-alpha 8] On 29 April 2020, Wertheim died;[38] he was buried in Section 11 of Miramar National Cemetery.[39]

Notes

  1. ↑ Joseph Wertheim emigrated from Brakel, Germany to Tucumcari, New Mexico, with the financial assistance of his cousin Jacob in 1906. Emma Vorenberg was Joseph's third cousin. Joseph worked as a traveling salesman, a multi-location clothes shop proprietor, cotton broker, and insurance agent.[5]: 39–40  Joseph Wertheim died on 4 January 1950;[6] some of his papers have been archived in the Harriet Rochlin Collection of Western Jewish History at the University of California, Los Angeles.[7] Emma died in November 1982, having continued to run an insurance business named after Joseph with their daughter Jeanette until her death.[8] Jeanette, who later married Norman E. Sparks in 1956, died in 2004.[9]
  2. ↑ Wertheim received his Naval Academy appointment from a senator from the state of New Mexico.[12]
  3. ↑ During the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower the United States had sold the United Kingdom the Skybolt system which would be armed with warheads of the United Kingdom.[19] Wertheim was involved in the Skybolt project, and its cancelation during his time working for the Director of Defense Research and Engineering.[11] The cancelation of the Skybolt system was due to it failing five of its initial launch tests.[19] With the report written by Wertheim in hand, President John F. Kennedy met with Prime Minister Harold Macmillan convincing the United Kingdom to not continue development of the Skybolt system, and adopt the Polaris ballistic missile as its nuclear deterrent.[11][19]
  4. ↑ Wertheim may have attended, or graduated, in 1951.[11]
  5. ↑ Wertheim contributed significantly to the National Academy of Engineering's parent organization, the National Academy of Sciences.[22]
  6. ↑ Special Projects Office was renamed to Strategic Systems Projects Office in 1968.[23]
  7. ↑ That same year, the Distinguished Graduate Award Medal was given to Slade Cutter, Ronald J. Hays, and Ross Perot.[30]
  8. ↑ His son Joseph, was also an alumnus of the New Mexico Military Institute.[36] Both his son, and he, supported Denis Theatre.[37]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Karagianis, Liz (22 August 2018). "Bob Wertheim, SM '54". MIT Technology Review. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  2. ↑ MacKenzie, Donald; Spinardi, Graham (August 1988). "The Shaping of Nuclear Weapon System Technology: US Fleet Ballistic Missile Guidance and Navigation: I: From Polaris to Poseidon". Social Studies of Science. 18 (3): 419–463. doi:10.1177/030631288018003002. JSTOR 285232. S2CID 108709165.
  3. 1 2 Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate (1979). Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1980 (Report). United States Government Printing Office. p. 2500. Retrieved 14 October 2021.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Department of Defense appropriations for 1980. United States Congress. 1979. pp. 361–362.
  5. ↑ Stratton, David H. (Winter 2014). "The Jewish Founding Fathers of Tucumcari". New Mexico Historical Review. 89 (1): 25–62. Retrieved 17 October 2021 – via University of New Mexico.
  6. ↑ "Joseph Wertheim, Civic Leader, Dies". Carlsbad Current-Argus. Carlsbad, New Mexico. 5 January 1950. Retrieved 17 October 2021.
  7. ↑ Shapiro, Harriet. "Wertheim, Joseph, History of New Mexico." [3pp. copy]. Harriet Rochlin Collection of Western Jewish History, Box: 33. Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
  8. ↑ "Norman E. Sparks". Carlsbad Current-Argus. 3 August 2008. Retrieved 17 October 2014 – via Legacy.com.
  9. ↑ Carlsbad Current-Argus (23 September 2004). "In Memory of Jeanette Wertheim Sparks" (PDF). New Mexico Jewish Historical Society. 18 (4): 7. Retrieved 17 October 2021.
  10. 1 2 "RADM Robert Halley Wertheim, USN (Ret) 1942 JC". Hall of Fame. New Mexico Military Academy. 23 October 1987. Retrieved 17 August 2021.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Index to Series of taped interviews with Rear Admiral Robert Halley Wertheim, USN (Ret.) (PDF) (Report). United States Naval Institute. Retrieved 17 August 2021.
  12. ↑ Register of Alumni. Annapolis, Maryland: U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Association. 1 July 1956. p. 414.
  13. 1 2 3 4 "Class of 1946". United States Naval Academy Alumni Association and Foundation. 2005. Retrieved 17 August 2021.
  14. ↑ "Pancake Festival's 2015 Military Honoree Rear Admiral Robert H. Wertheim" (PDF). Newsletter. Rancho Bernardo Historical Society. Spring 2015. Retrieved 17 August 2021.
  15. 1 2 Spinardi, Graham (6 January 1994). From Polaris to Trident: The Development of US Fleet Ballistic Missile Technology. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521413572.
  16. ↑ Craven, John Pina (2 June 2002). The Silent War: The Cold War Battle Beneath the Sea. Simon and Schuster. p. 78–. ISBN 978-0-7432-4225-7.
  17. 1 2 Lawson, Cliff (2017). The Station Comes of Age: History of the Navy at China Lake, California (PDF). Government Printing Office. p. 355. ISBN 9780160939709. Archived from the original on 19 August 2021. Retrieved 18 August 2021.
  18. ↑ Mackby, Jenifer; Cornish, Paul (2008). U.S.-UK Nuclear Cooperation After 50 Years. Chatham House. Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic & International Studies. pp. 359–361. ISBN 9780892065301.
  19. 1 2 3 Weintz, Steve (28 December 2021). "Nuclear Diplomacy Delivered Polaris Submarines to the Royal Navy". The National Interest. Washington, District of Columbia: Center for the National Interest. Retrieved 31 January 2021.
  20. ↑ Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.) (22 May 2013) [1974]. Catalogue for 1974–1976 (Report). Naval Postgraduate School. p. 13. Retrieved 17 October 2021.
  21. ↑ "Rear Admiral Robert H. Wertheim". Members. National Academy of Engineering. Retrieved 17 August 2021.
  22. ↑ National Academy of Sciences (27 June 2019). Report of the Treasurer for the Year Ended December 31, 2018 (Report). National Academies Press. p. 26. Retrieved 18 October 2021.
  23. ↑ "Our History". Strategic Systems Programs. United States Navy. Retrieved 17 August 2021.
  24. ↑ "Robert H. Wertheim". Hall of Valor. Sightline Media Group. Retrieved 17 August 2021.
    1979 Congressional Record, Vol. 125, Page S30788 (2 November 1979) Woolsey, James (2 November 1979). "Adm. Robert H. Wertheim" (PDF). Congressional Record – Senate. United States Congress.
    "Trident I Operational" (PDF). All Hands. Alexandria, Virginia: United States Navy. January 1980. p. 4. Retrieved 14 October 2021.
  25. 1 2 "Distinguished Expert Robert H. Wertheim". California Council on Science and Technology. 2018. Retrieved 17 August 2021.
  26. ↑ 1983 Congressional Record, Vol. 129, Page E20143 (20 July 1983) Hyde, Henry J (20 July 1983). "Retired Admirals and the Center for Defense Information" (PDF). Congressional Record. United States Government Publishing Office. Retrieved 22 August 2021.
  27. ↑ "Managers on paid leave for independent Los Alamos probe". UPI. 14 October 2021. Retrieved 14 October 2021.
  28. ↑ "Social and Personal". B'nai B'rith Messenger. Los Angeles. 5 April 1946. Retrieved 19 August 2021 – via The National Library of Israel.
  29. 1 2 Pitz, Marylynne (15 August 2012). "Obituary: Joe Wertheim / Multitalented volunteer devoted to family, service". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved 17 August 2021.
  30. 1 2 "2005 Distinguished Graduate Award Program". U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Association. 2005. Retrieved 17 August 2021.
  31. ↑ "Paid Notice: Deaths LEVINE, JULES E." The New York Times. 1 February 2005. Retrieved 19 August 2021.
    Report of the Treasurer for the Year Ended December 31, 2014. National Academies Press. 3 July 2015. p. 27. ISBN 9780309376808.
  32. ↑ Hordes, Stan (September 2005). "Eighteenth Annual Conference To Focus On New Mexico Jews In The Military And The Peace Movement" (PDF). New Mexico Jewish Historical Society. 19 (3): 1, 4. Retrieved 15 October 2021.
  33. ↑ "Distinguished Submariner Award". Naval Submarine League. 2019. Retrieved 18 August 2021.
  34. ↑ Report on the Unauthorized Movement of Nuclear Weapons (PDF) (Report). United States Department of Defense. April 2008. p. 23. Officer of the Under Secretary of Defense For Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics. Retrieved 14 October 2021.
  35. ↑ "Deceased Alumni". New Mexico Military Institute. Retrieved 22 August 2021. He was the beloved husband for 38 years of Elaine (Edwards) Wertheim; devoted father of Benjamin E. Wertheim; son of Rear Adm. Robert H. Wertheim and the late Barbara Selig Wertheim; and brother of David A. Wertheim.
  36. ↑ "Silver Taps 2019". New Mexico Military Institute. 2019. Retrieved 18 August 2021.
  37. ↑ "Founders Circle". The Denis. Denis Theatre Foundation’s. Retrieved 14 October 2021.
  38. ↑ "In Memorium". The Bridge. Vol. 50, no. 4. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Engineering. Winter 2020. p. 108. Retrieved 22 August 2021.
  39. ↑ "Nationwide Gravesite Locator". National Cemetery Administration. United States Department of Veterans Affairs. Retrieved 22 August 2021.
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