Chief of Engineers of the United States Army | |
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Department of the Army | |
Reports to | Secretary of the Army Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works) |
Seat | The Pentagon, Arlington County, Virginia, U.S. |
Appointer | The President with Senate advice and consent |
Term length | Four years |
Constituting instrument | 10 U.S.C. § 3036 |
Formation | April 1776 |
First holder | LTC Rufus Putnam |
Website | Official website |
The Chief of Engineers is a principal United States Army staff officer at The Pentagon. The Chief advises the Army on engineering matters, and serves as the Army's topographer and proponent for real estate and other related engineering programs. The Chief of Engineers is the senior service engineer for the Department of Defense, responsible for integrating all aspects of combat, general and geospatial engineering across the Joint Force.
The Chief of Engineers also commands the United States Army Corps of Engineers. As commander of the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Chief of Engineers leads a major Army command that is the world's largest public engineering, design, and construction management agency. This office defines policy and guidance, and it plans direction for the organizations within the Corps. The Chief of Engineers is currently a lieutenant general billet but in the past has been held by field grade officers as low as major. Civilian oversight of the Chief of Engineers is provided by the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works).
A pair of golden castle pins, a graduation gift, was gifted to Major General Leif J. Sverdrup by General of the Army Douglas MacArthur in 1945, as MacArthur thought Sverdrup was more deserving to wear them. Sverdrup gave them to the Chief of Engineers in 1975. Every Chief of Engineers since then has worn MacArthur's pins.
The Distinguished Service Medal (DSM) is a military decoration of the United States Army that is presented to soldiers who have distinguished themselves by exceptionally meritorious service to the government in a duty of great responsibility. The performance must be such as to merit recognition for service that is clearly exceptional. The exceptional performance of normal duty will not alone justify an award of this decoration.
The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is the military engineering branch of the United States Army. A direct reporting unit (DRU), it has three primary mission areas: Engineer Regiment, military construction, and civil works. USACE has 37,000 civilian and military personnel, making it one of the world's largest public engineering, design, and construction management agencies. The USACE workforce is approximately 97% civilian, 3% active duty military. The civilian workforce is primarily located in the United States, Europe and in select Middle East office locations. Civilians do not function as active duty military and are not required to be in active war and combat zones; however, volunteer opportunities do exist for civilians to do so.
Hugh John "Pat" Casey CBE was a major general in the United States Army. A 1918 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Casey served in Germany during the Occupation of the Rhineland. He later returned to Germany to attend the Technische Hochschule in Berlin, earning a Doctor of Engineering degree.
United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) was a military formation of the United States Army active from 1941 to 1946. The new command's headquarters was created on 26 July 1941, at No. 1, Calle Victoria, Manila, Luzon, the Philippines, with General Douglas MacArthur as commander. The Chief of Staff was Brigadier General Richard K. Sutherland and the Deputy Chief of Staff was Lieutenant Colonel Richard J. Marshall. The core of this command was drawn from the Office of the Military Advisor to the Commonwealth Government of the Philippines.
South West Pacific Area (SWPA) was the name given to the Allied supreme military command in the South West Pacific Theatre of World War II. It was one of four major Allied commands in the Pacific War. SWPA included the Philippines, Borneo, the Dutch East Indies, East Timor, Australia, the Territories of Papua and New Guinea, and the western part of the Solomon Islands. It primarily consisted of United States and Australian forces, although Dutch, Filipino, British, and other Allied forces also served in the SWPA.
George Howard Brett was a United States Army Air Forces General during World War II. An Early Bird of Aviation, Brett served as a staff officer in World War I. In 1941, following the outbreak of war with Japan, Brett was appointed Deputy Commander of a short-lived major Allied command, the American-British-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDACOM), which oversaw Allied forces in South East Asia and the South West Pacific. In early 1942, he was put in charge of United States Army Forces in Australia, until the arrival of Douglas MacArthur. Brett then commanded all Allied Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific Area. In November 1942, he was appointed commander of the US Caribbean Defense Command and remained in this post for the rest of the war.
William C. Gribble Jr. graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1941 and was commissioned in the Corps of Engineers.
In the United States Armed Forces, a lieutenant general is a three-star general officer in the United States Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Space Force.
Leif Johan Sverdrup CBE was a Norwegian-born American civil engineer and general with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his service in the Southwest Pacific Area during World War II where he was Chief Engineer under General of the Army Douglas MacArthur.
Gold Castles is the name of the 14K gold insignia pin handed down from General Douglas MacArthur to his chief engineer Major General Leif J. Sverdrup in 1945, who established a tradition in 1975 that it shall be given to each successive Chief of Engineers of the United States Army Corps of Engineers.
This is the service summary of Douglas MacArthur, a General in the United States Army, who began his career in 1903 as a second lieutenant and served in three major military conflicts, going on to hold the highest military offices of both the United States and the Philippines.
Ennis Clement Whitehead was an early United States Army aviator and a United States Army Air Forces general during World War II. Whitehead joined the U. S. Army after the United States entered World War I in 1917. He trained as an aviator and served in France, where he was posted to the 3d Aviation Instruction Center and became a qualified test pilot. After the war, Whitehead returned to school at the University of Kansas. After he graduated, he was commissioned as a first lieutenant in 1920.
Wilhelm Delp Styer was a lieutenant general in the United States Army during World War II. A graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point with the class of 1916, he was commissioned into the United States Army Corps of Engineers and served with the Pancho Villa Expedition and on the Western Front. Between the wars he obtained a degree in civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was executive officer and assistant district engineer of the New York Engineer District.
Stephen Jones Chamberlin was a lieutenant general in the United States Army who served during World War II as General of the Army Douglas MacArthur's Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3, the staff officer in charge of plans and operations.
Arthur W. Oberbeck was an American lawyer, energy consultant, and Lieutenant General who served during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. A career officer commissioned in the United States Army Corps of Engineers, Oberbeck served multiple assignments in the then developing field of Nuclear Weapons, as the Commanding General of the 1st Infantry Division, and within the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
^ a: Office of History. "Commanders of the Corps of Engineers". United States Army Corps of Engineers . Retrieved 28 November 2009.