Remembering RADM Wayne E. Meyer, Father of Aegis

Admiral Meyer is known as the “Father of Aegis,” the revolutionary combat system now standard in U.S. Navy surface warships for air and missile defense. Meyer grew up during the Depression on a farm near Brunswick, Missouri. He enlisted in 1943 when he was 17 years old and was commissioned through the Naval Reserve V-12 officer training program at the University of Kansas. His initial assignment as an ensign was to begin his postgraduate education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His first tours of sea duty were in the destroyer Goodrich (DD-831), 1947–48; the light cruiser Springfield (CL-66), in 1948–49; and the destroyer tender Sierra (AD-18), 1950–51. In 1951–52 he attended Guided Missile School at Fort Bliss, Texas, and from 1952 to 1954 taught at the Nuclear Weapons School in Norfolk, Virginia.