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Contact Info
Home Town Tuxedo Park
Date of Passing Nov 02, 2008
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Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
Henry Loomis
WWII Navy Veteran, Asiatic Theater of War, 13 Battle Stars Lieutenant Commander, Bronze Star, Former CIA, Head of VOA and PBS
Mr. Loomis graduated first in his naval training class and, in addition to teaching radar, served as a radar officer with carriers, air squadrons and battleships. He received the Bronze Star and Air Medal.
Henry Loomis (April 19, 1919 - November 2, 2008) was appointed director of the Voice of America in 1958 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, resigning from the post in 1965 after policy conflicts with President Lyndon B. Johnson, and was appointed by Richard Nixon in 1972 to serve as president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Loomis was born on April 19, 1919 in Tuxedo Park, New York. His father, Alfred Lee Loomis built a fortune financing public utilities and sold out just before the Wall Street crash of 1929. Alfred Loomis set up a physics laboratory in an old mansion where Henry worked with his father as a teenager on brain-wave research, including participating as a volunteer in his father's experiments. The two men later took part in pioneering research on radar.
Loomis attended Harvard University and left in 1940 during his senior year to enlist in the United States Navy. Harvard granted him an undergraduate degree in 1946 based on his radar instruction while in the Navy.
In the navy, he was on the staff of the Commander in Chief Pacific Fleet Headquarters in Pearl Harbor, at the time of the attack by the Japanese. Loomis was responsible for the creation of training materials for radar, and worked with pilots and officers on ships to help overcome their wariness of the technology and develop their skills in its use. Loomis was awarded the Bronze Star Medal and left the Navy with the rank of Lieutenant Commander.
Late in the war, Loomis had a chance meeting with United States Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, a cousin of Loomis', and Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project. In a discussion about potential target cities in Japan for the atomic bomb being developed, Loomis dissuaded them from targeting Kyoto, citing the city's art treasures he had learned about while studying Japanese history at Harvard.
He attended the University of California, Berkeley after the war, where he took graduate courses in physics, including work as an assistant with Ernest Lawrence at the school's radiation laboratory. He spent four years as assistant to the Dr. James Rhyne Killian, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and led the research and intelligence functions at the United States Information Agency. Loomis later directed the staff of Dr. Killian, who had been appointed as the President's science advisor.
He served for 13 years on the board of the not-for-profit Mitre Corporation, which was affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked with the Central Intelligence Agency and United States Department of Defense after graduating from Berkeley.
Other Comments:
During his WWII Naval Service
The Executive Officer of VS-l0 (Scouting Squadron Ten), LT William I. Martin, was very interested in the development of aviation radar. Torpedo Ten received a replacement TBF with ASB-l radar and LT Martin requested the opportunity to develop its potential for sector-search operations. The Ship's Radar Officer, LT Henry Loomis, volunteered to assist Martin in this project, and by 1 December 1942 they had 15 hours of experimental radar flying time. They recognized its capability as well as its limitations, but this was the seed that started the development of night-carrier operations. Improvements in new types of aviation radar were soon forthcoming from the engineers at MIT and the electronic industry.
World War II ended in 1945, and by the time Henry left the service the following year, he had survived Pearl Harbor Day, attained the rank of Lieutenant Commander and won awards including a Bronze Star, Air Medal and Pacific Ribbon with 13 battle stars.
. . . . . .
Mr. Loomis quit as VOA director in 1965 after a falling-out with President Lyndon B. Johnson during the Vietnam War. Johnson demanded that VOA keep quiet about American planes flying over Laos. Believing that VOA had an obligation to report the news, Mr. Loomis resigned in protest.
World War II/Asiatic-Pacific Theater/Okinawa Gunto Operation
From Month/Year
March / 1945
To Month/Year
June / 1945
Description The Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg. was fought on the Ryukyu Islands of Okinawa and was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific War of World War II. The 82-day-long battle lasted from early April until mid-June 1945. After a long campaign of island hopping, the Allies were approaching Japan, and planned to use Okinawa, a large island only 340 mi (550 km) away from mainland Japan, as a base for air operations on the planned invasion of Japanese mainland (coded Operation Downfall). Four divisions of the U.S. 10th Army (the 7th, 27th, 77th, and 96th) and two Marine Divisions (the 1st and 6th) fought on the island. Their invasion was supported by naval, amphibious, and tactical air forces.
The battle has been referred to as the "typhoon of steel" in English, and tetsu no ame ("rain of steel") or ("violent wind of steel") in Japanese. The nicknames refer to the ferocity of the fighting, the intensity of kamikaze attacks from the Japanese defenders, and to the sheer numbers of Allied ships and armored vehicles that assaulted the island. The battle resulted in the highest number of casualties in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Based on Okinawan government sources, mainland Japan lost 77,166 soldiers, who were either killed or committed suicide, and the Allies suffered 14,009 deaths (with an estimated total of more than 65,000 casualties of all kinds). Simultaneously, 42,000–150,000 local civilians were killed or committed suicide, a significant proportion of the local population. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki together with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria caused Japan to surrender less than two months after the end of the fighting on Okinawa.
My Participation in This Battle or Operation
From Month/Year
March / 1945
To Month/Year
June / 1945
Last Updated: Mar 16, 2020
Personal Memories
Memories Radar Pickets: The Executive Officer of VS-l0 (Scouting Squadron Ten), LT William I. Martin, was very interested in the development of aviation radar. Torpedo Ten received a replacement TBF with ASB-l radar and LT Martin requested the opportunity to develop its potential for sector-search operations. The Ship's Radar Officer, LT Henry Loomis, volunteered to assist Martin in this project, and by 1 December 1942 they had 15 hours of experimental radar flying time. They recognized its capability as well as its limitations, but this was the seed that started the development of night-carrier operations. Improvements in new types of aviation radar were soon forthcoming from the engineers at MIT and the electronic industry.
