Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,721
By This is the grave of William Wohlsen Behrens.
Born in Newport, Rhode Island in 1922, Behrens grew up in a military family. His father was a rear admiral in the Navy. He was destined for the Navy from the very beginning. He went to fancy schools and then to the Naval Academy in Annapolis. He was in the class of 1944, but the Navy rushed them out in 1943 to fight the war. He then went to the Navy Submarine School in New London, Connecticut (I still have never been to the submarine museum there) and then went active on submarine duty. He did well and won the Silver Star and Bronze Star by the end of the war.
Behrens was very good at the job. He almost immediately found ways to improve both sonar technology and communication between submarines. He stayed active on submarine duty most of the time until 1950, but he was almost too good for active duty. His skills could be better used elsewhere. So he became the project officer to develop a submarine telephone service. He started teaching at the Fleet Sonar School, did some more time on subs, then headed the Engineering Department at the U.S. Submarine School. This was of course the era of nuclear power and in 1955, he was given the post of directing the Navy’s first Nuclear Power School. By this time, he was working closely with the Atomic Energy Commission, mostly helping set guidelines for nuclear power plants. As such, he began studying nuclear physics seriously and did advanced schooling on it. He rose and rose over the next twenty years, becoming one of the most important naval officers in postwar America.
By the mid 60s, Behrens became a key policy person in the military, working with NATO in several capacities. He was awarded a Navy Unit Commendation for “planning to identify NATO nuclear force requirements and in his coordination with participating governments.” In 1966, he was named to the Policy Planning Council, which is an influential wing within the State Department that serves as a relatively independent advisory council for the Secretary of State, consisting of people mostly if not all not in fact affiliated with State. In this case, the Secretary of Defense nominated him. This group had originally existed at the bequest of George Kennan and helped produce the Marshall Plan, to give you a sense of its historical importance. It does still exist today, headed by Salman Ahmed.
Among the other things Behrens was involved with at this time was the development of fish protein powder. I’m not totally sure of the story here; obviously he didn’t invent the idea, but there was some policy components to it and he was a central figure here. In a sense, this sums up a lot of the postwar world–weird military/civilian collaborations on scientific enterprises that at first glance you wouldn’t think the military would take that seriously but in fact had massive foreign policy implications. It’s not surprising I suppose–nutrition was absolutely critical to American foreign policy during these years and Behrens helped design the legislation to finance Fish Protein Concentrate factories in southeast Asia and Latin America. For all this, he got a promotion to rear admiral.
He was actually in Vietnam too, not just at a desk or on fancy NATO outings. For obvious reasons, we don’t talk too much about the Navy in Vietnam like we do with the rest of the military branches but of course the Navy was critically important. He was involved in 28 amphibious operations and was there during the Tet Offensive. He won his third Legion of Merit award here and his second Bronze Star. He won his fourth Legion of Merit in 1969 after being named Director, Politico-Military Policy. In short, he was one of those high ranking military guys with lots of bling.
But none of this is why I discuss Behrens in this series. He’d be worthy enough, sure. But the real reason is the work he did to establish the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency in 1970. NOAA didn’t come out of nowhere. The government did have agencies that covered some of what it would do. The Environmental Science Service Organization was its most direct predecessor and that included the Weather Bureau, which is what most of us know NOAA for today. But of course NOAA does so much else. I have had graduate students for instance on NOAA fellowship and internships and jobs logging information about shipwrecks, which significantly expands our knowledge about all sorts of history. The scientific mission of NOAA is enormously important and covers basically the entirety of ocean policy. By 1970, Behrens was the official Oceanographer of the Navy and also was the Federal Coordinator for Ocean Mapping and Prediction.
Oh and here’s some NOAA trivia. The reason NOAA is in Commerce instead of Interior is that Richard Nixon was pissed that his Secretary of Interior Wally Hickel had urged him to listen to antiwar demonstrators, so he stripped all this from his agency. That’s the Dick we know and don’t love!
Under NOAA, Behrens continued to work on ocean policy, including international agreements on the law of the sea. He did a lot of work with the UN on these issues and was awarded his 5th Legion of Merit for this. He became deputy administrator of NOAA in 1972 and retired the next year, given the Distinguished Service Medal and given the permanent rank of vice-admiral.
In his late life, Behrens combined the ever lucrative lobbying opportunities that happen for a guy like this with continued real scientific work. The state of Florida hired him in 1976. to start the Florida Institute of Oceanography, currently located at the University of South Florida and which Ron DeSantis probably sees as a home of woke for doing things like studying climate change. He ran it for a few years after its official opening in 1978. He also did work to help establish oceanography programs at the K-12 and community college, which I assume mostly means developing educational materials on the topic. Another big thing he did was work out standards between universities and other partners on oceanographic research, which is actually an important thing, something you learn when you are teaching at a university that has very large ocean-based programs.
Behrens died in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1986. He was only 63 years old. Heart attack. He did so much that it surprised me he was so young.
William Wohlsen Behrens is buried on the confiscated lands of the traitor Lee, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia.
If you would like this series to visit other naval officers from the Vietnam War, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Elmo Zumwalt is in Annapolis, Maryland and Norvell Ward is also in Arlington. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.