PORT HUENEME : Nemesis to Get a New Commander
The Naval Surface Warfare Center in Port Hueneme will have a change of command Wednesday when Capt. John S. Beachy takes over the Navy’s engineering station, known as Nemesis.
Nemesis is the secretive collection of engineers, scientists and other trouble-shooters who keep the Navy’s most sophisticated weaponry prepared for war. Its scientists and technicians help design, install, test and fix shipboard weapons.
Beachy will take over the command from Capt. Richard D. Williams III, who has been in charge since Feb. 21, 1990. Williams has been promoted to director of warfare systems architecture and engineering at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command in Washington.
Beachy, a 30-year Navy veteran, is now the project manager for NATO’s Seasparrow Surface Missile System Project in Washington.
The June 17 ceremony recognizing the change in command will take place at 10 a.m. in the courtyard of the Rear Adm. Roger E. Spreen Engineering Center at the Port Hueneme Navy base.
Guest speaker for the ceremony will be Rear Adm. Philip M. Quast, deputy assistant chief of naval operations, surface warfare, from Washington.
Beachy graduated from the U. S. Naval Academy in 1966. He was assigned to Vietnam in 1968, serving on river patrol boats, and later as an operations manager.
He was commanding officer of the guided missile destroyer Claude V. Ricketts in 1984 while the ship was assigned off the coast of Beirut, Lebanon.
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