Henry A. Schade

He was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and was appointed to the United States Naval Academy in 1919, graduating with distinction in 1923. After two years of sea duty, he went into the Construction Corps[?] and attended MIT, receiving a master's degree in naval architecture in 1928. After time at the Mare Island Navy Yard and other facilities, in 1935 he attended the Technische Hochschule Berlin-Charlottenburg[?], receiving a Dr.-Ing. in 1937.

He then became a Navy liaison with Newport News Shipbuilding, playing a major role in the development of the Essex-class[?] aircraft carriers. In 1941 he was assigned to the Navy Bureau of Ships[?], where he was responsible for the design of the Midway-class[?] carriers, with innovations including the use of the flight deck[?] as a structural element (previously flight decks were flimsy wooden platforms perched above the ship proper).

In 1944 he participated in efforts to collect and evaluate German technical accomplishments, and promoted to Commodore, ran the Naval Technical Mission[?] in Europe.

On November 1, 1945, he was appointed director of the Naval Research Laboratory[?], where he stayed until retiring from the Navy in 1949. But instead of relaxing on his pension, he joined the mechanical engineering faculty at the University of California, Berkeley and became director of its Institute of Engineering Research[?].

In 1958 he organized a Department of Naval Architecture at Berkeley, serving as its first chair. (The department later added offshore engineering[?], but was always small, and finally disbanded in 1998).

He finally retired in 1968, and in 1971 received the Gibbs Brothers Medal of the National Academy of Sciences, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1973.

His wife Alice Schade[?], (with whom he had two sons, Henry A. Schade, Jr.[?] and Richard J. Schade[?]) died in 1990, and he himself just two years later.