Charles E. “Chuck” Myers

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	One of his big ideas was to bring back the Navy’s battleships. The Iowa-class battleship New Jersey had seen action during Vietnam, but most had been placed in mothball’s during the 1950s. Myers thought they would be useful for amphibious and generalized ground combat operations in coastal areas when ground forces would need long duration and highly destructive fire support. He found that 80 percent of all targets bombed by aircraft in Vietnam could have been hit by an Iowa-class battleship. He spent years working to convince influential people in Washington to bring them out of retirement. It wasn’t until the Reagan administration created a 600 ship navy that his efforts paid off, with four Iowa-class battleships recommissioned to see another decade of service, including Operation Desert Storm in 1991.<ref>http://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/04/magazine/return-of-the-battleships.html?pagewanted=all</ref>		One of his big ideas was to bring back the Navy’s battleships. The Iowa-class battleship New Jersey had seen action during Vietnam, but most had been placed in mothball’s during the 1950s. Myers thought they would be useful for amphibious and generalized ground combat operations in coastal areas when ground forces would need long duration and highly destructive fire support. He found that 80 percent of all targets bombed by aircraft in Vietnam could have been hit by an Iowa-class battleship. He spent years working to convince influential people in Washington to bring them out of retirement. It wasn’t until the Reagan administration created a 600 ship navy that his efforts paid off, with four Iowa-class battleships recommissioned to see another decade of service, including Operation Desert Storm in 1991.<ref>http://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/04/magazine/return-of-the-battleships.html?pagewanted=all</ref>
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−	Along the way, he did ruffle a few feathers. His long-time friend Tom Christie remembers one meeting Myers participated in that got “a little heated.” While working to develop the Maverick missile in the mid-1970s, designed to be used against Soviet ground vehicles on the plains of Europe, a meeting was called to decide where to conduct a crucial test. The Air Force wanted to conduct the test at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Myers thought that was a terrible idea because the terrain there didn’t replicate the European environment in which the missile was expected to operate. This disagreement quickly escalated, and before most people in the room realized what was happening, Myers and Air Force Major General Bobby Bond were on their feet with their jackets off in preparation for a fist fight. The two were restrained before punches were thrown. “He could get passionate during these meetings!” Christie said.
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−	Myers himself acknowledged that many people in the services and the defense industry considered him to be, in his own words, “a pain in the ass.” He attributed this to a desire to challenge the conventional wisdom and question the way business was being done.
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−	“You’ve got to be free to think about things outside your normal envelope. I haven’t had a normal envelope. It’s the nature of my life,” he said.
	The Virginia Aeronautical Historical Society inducted Chuck Myers into its Hall of Fame in 1999.<ref>http://virginiaaviationhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Myers.pdf</ref>		The Virginia Aeronautical Historical Society inducted Chuck Myers into its Hall of Fame in 1999.<ref>http://virginiaaviationhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Myers.pdf</ref>