Richard Steere; Gen. Patton’s Weather Expert During WWII

Richard Steere, a retired Navy captain who was the weather expert for Gen. George S. Patton during the Anglo-American landing in North Africa in November 1942 and a member of a bronze medal-winning U.S. fencing team at the 1932 Summer Olympics, died March 17 of pneumonia at a hospital in Lanham, Md. The longtime McLean, Va., resident was 92.

Off the coast of Morocco, Patton and other aides expressed pessimism at the heavy seas and what it meant for a landing that was the opening of a new theater of operations during World War II. But Steere, then a Navy meteorologist, steeled Patton’s resolve with a forecast that, though at odds with information from London and Washington, proved correct. This feat earned him the fiery general’s confidence and the nickname “Commander Houdini.”

Steere was born in Kansas City, Mo., and raised in Chicago. He learned the rudiments of fencing from a drama professor at the University of Chicago, where his brother was a student. Steere was on a fencing team at the Naval Academy, from which he graduated in 1931. His lightning-quick hand movements earned him a spot on the foil team that won a medal at the Los Angeles Olympics.

Steere received a master’s degree in meteorology from MIT in 1940. After the Africa landing, he was promoted and served at various command posts predicting weather conditions for naval actions, including the surf and swell conditions for the D-day landing at Normandy.

After the war, he taught at the Naval Academy and commanded the Bainbridge Naval Training Station in Maryland as well as two destroyers, the New Kent and the Porter. He retired from the Navy in 1961 and moved to McLean. From the 1950s into the 1980s, he was a fixture at the Naval Academy, where he taught and fenced with young midshipmen.

Fit and compact, he fenced into his late 70s and won various titles of the Amateur Fencers League of America, which became the United States Fencing Assn. With his eyesight failing, his last recorded tournament victory was in 1989.