"Father of Guided-Missiles" John H. Sides Signed FDC Dated 1963 For Sale

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"Father of Guided-Missiles" John H. Sides Signed FDC Dated 1963:
$499.99

Up for sale a RARE! "Father of Guided-Missiles" John H. Sides Hand Signed First Day Cover.

ES-5921

Admiral John Harold Sides (April 22, 1904 – April 3, 1978) was a four-star admiral in the United States Navy who served as commander in chief of the United States Pacific Fleet from 1960 to 1963 and was known as the father of the Navy's guided-missile program. Born in Roslyn, Washington to George Kelley Sides and Estella May Bell, he attended primary and secondary schools in Roslyn, then studied for one year at the University of Washington before being appointed to the United States Naval Academy, from which he graduated ninth in a class of 448 in 1925. Commissioned ensign, he served four years aboard the battleship Tennessee before being dispatched to the Asiatic Station with the destroyer John D. Edwards to participate in the Yangtze River Patrol. He returned to the United States in June 1931 to study naval ordnance at the Naval Postgraduate School in Annapolis, Maryland, beginning a long career in that field. He completed the ordnance course at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1934, and in May began two years as assistant fire control officer aboard the light cruiser Cincinnati. He served as flag lieutenant on the staff of a battleship division commander from 1936 to 1937, then spent two years in the ammunition section of the Bureau of Ordnance. In July 1939, he assumed command of the destroyer Tracy, which was assigned to Mine Division 1 and operated out of Pearl Harbor with the Battle Force. He commanded Tracy until November 1940, then reported aboard the light cruiser Savannah as gunnery officer. Following the United States entry into World War II, he returned to the Bureau of Ordnance in March 1942 to serve as chief of the ammunition and explosives section, where his work in research and development was instrumental in creating fuses and explosives and devising new formulae. At the Bureau of Ordnance, Sides nurtured a number of early rocket projects, often against high-level institutional opposition. One notable success was the High velocity aircraft rocket (HVAR), a 5-inch air-to-ground rocket that was used in Europe against trucks and tanks and was being produced at the rate of 40,000 per day by the end of the war. "He was a real pioneer of the Navy rocket programs," recalled Thomas F. Dixon, HVAR project officer under Sides' supervision and later chief designer of the engines for the Atlas, Thor, Jupiter, Redstone, and Saturn rockets. "All the way through it was a fight with the admirals. Caltech's professor of physics, Dr. Charles Lauritsen, had developed a barrage rocket - ideal for landings to clean up the banks. When we brought this to the Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance, however, his general reaction was, 'Don't put rockets on my battleships, cruisers, or destroyers.'" Sides returned to sea in October 1944 in command of Mine Division 8 for combat duty in the Pacific theater, where the Navy credited him with "contributing materially to the success of the Okinawa invasion." In April 1945, he became commander of Destroyer Squadron 47, and remained in that command until the end of the war. After the war, he was assigned as assistant chief of staff for operations and training on the staff of the commander of battleships and cruisers in the Atlantic Fleet. In September 1947 he reported for instruction at the National War College in Washington, D.C. In June 1948, he began two years as deputy to the assistant chief of naval operations for guided missiles, Rear Admiral Daniel V. Gallery. Over the next decade, he would build a reputation for missile expertise and eventually become known as the father of the Navy's guided-missile program. As deputy assistant chief of naval operations for guided missiles, Sides risked his career by participating in the Revolt of the Admirals, an episode of civil-military conflict in which high-ranking Navy officials publicly clashed with their Air Force counterparts and civilian superiors over the future of the United States military. Testifying as a guided-missile expert before the House Armed Services Committee on October 11, 1949, Sides warned that the Air Force's B-36 strategic bomber would not be able to penetrate Russian defenses to deliver its nuclear payload as claimed, since the United States already possessed supersonic guided missiles that would "seek out and destroy the really fast jet bombers now on the drawing boards" and the Russians had likely inherited a similar capability from the German Wasserfall missile development program and personnel they had captured at the end of World War II. When Sides became eligible for early promotion to rear admiral a month later, the selection board was perceived to be stacked against captains who had participated in the Revolt because it included none of the top admirals involved in the controversy. Passed over as expected, in 1950 he took command of the heavy cruiser Albany for a twelve-month tour in the Atlantic Fleet. Sides had hoped to captain the first guided-missile cruiser, which the Navy had expected to put in operation by that year, but its development schedule had slipped due to problems with the sound barrier. The first guided-missile cruiser would not become operational until 1955. 

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