John H. Sides

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.{{citation ==World War II==

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. 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. ==Father of the guided-missile Navy==

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. Fleet ballistic missile Sides was promoted to rear admiral in 1952 as director of the guided-missile division in the office of the chief of naval operations. In that role, he directed the Navy's entire guided-missile program for almost four years, Sides handled the Navy's side of negotiations over how exactly to implement the Killian Committee's recommendations, which called for the Navy to develop a ship-launched FBM similar to the Army's Jupiter IRBM. On September 13, 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower accepted the Killian Committee recommendations and directed the Navy to design a sea-based support system for Jupiter. Sides and the Navy protested that liquid-fuel rockets like Jupiter were too dangerous for shipboard use and pushed instead for submarine-launched solid-fuel rockets for tactical use against enemy submarine bases. However, on November 17, 1955, Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson ordered the Navy to join the Army on Jupiter development, and specified that all such missile development would not be externally funded but would have to be carved out of the existing Navy budget. In October, following the unexpected Russian launch of the first satellite, Sputnik 1, Sides spoke before the American Rocket Society and Institute of Aeronautical Sciences and disputed the Russian report of a successful ICBM test, claiming the reported August flight might actually have been an "errant sputnik" that failed to make its orbit. He was "certain that the enormous effort which went into the development and launching of Sputnik was at the expense" of the Soviet ICBM program, and asserted that "winning the race for development of long-range weapons systems is more important than getting up the first satellite."{{citation After the dramatic failure of the first United States attempt to launch a satellite on December 6, 1957, Sides spoke at a conference of the American Management Association on January 15, 1958, where he reiterated that the nation's development of long-range missiles was "progressing very well" and complained that a false impression had been created by missiles that failed in early tests. "It just so happened that about the time of the sputnik launchings, our intermediate and intercontinental ballistics missile flight-test programs were getting into high gear; and not being blessed with a Siberian proving ground, where we might do our testing in private, every malfunctioning test vehicle was given a play in all the media of public information. The impression was unwittingly created that we were really on our uppers, when, as a matter of fact, each one of these so-called unsuccessful missiles yielded a great deal of the very information it was fired to obtain. In ten years of missile experience I cannot recall a missile system in which similar casualties were not encountered in the early test flights. But in each case we have determined the causes, corrected the deficiencies and gone on to develop a successful weapon system."{{citation ==Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet==

to , September 19, 1962. On June 1, 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower nominated Sides for promotion to admiral as commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet (CINCPACFLT). Because of Sides' background, his appointment was interpreted as heralding a new emphasis on missile warfare. Sides relieved Admiral Herbert G. Hopwood on August 30. His command was responsible for guarding the Far East and the United States West Coast, and included the First Fleet, the Seventh Fleet, 400 ships, 3,000 aircraft, and half a million men. ==Personal life==

In retirement, he became a consultant to the Lockheed Aircraft Company in California. Yangtze Service Medal; the Legion of Merit with gold star and Combat V, awarded for his service as chief of the ammunition and explosives section of the Bureau of Ordnance during World War II; two Navy Unit commendations; the American Defense Service Medal; the American Campaign Medal; the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal; the World War II Victory Medal; and the National Defense Service Medal. He received the rank of comendador in the Order of Naval Merit from Brazil. He was a member of the chemical society Phi Lambda Upsilon, the research society Sigma Xi, and the graduate engineering society Iota Alpha. He was a Fellow of the American Rocket Society. He received a master of science degree from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1934. The National Defense Industrial Association confers the annual Admiral John H. Sides Award on select members of its Strike, Land Attack and Air Defense Division "in recognition of meritorious service and noteworthy contribution to effective government-industry advancement in the fields of strike, land attack, and air defense warfare." He died of a heart seizure on the Coronado golf course near San Diego, California at the age of 73, and was buried in Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery.{{citation ==Decorations==