COL ROBERT W. HUNTZINGER

25 June 1968-30 November 1976

“Mr. TOW Calls It a Career After 25 Years,” The Redstone Rocket, 24 Nov 76,

pp. 4-5

            His friends jokingly say Colonel Robert Huntzinger came to Redstone immediately after the water went down—and they don't mean the flood of 1973.

            For the record, he holds the longevity mark among Army project managers, having spent 8½  of his 25 years as a project manager with the Missile Command.

            Huntzinger, who is retiring from the Army November 30, is TOW project manager, a fact of which he is extremely proud, calling it “…my most challenging job in 25 years of Army service—,” and the one in which he feels he made a valuable contribution to the Army and the free world.

            “TOW was the right weapon system, for the right time,” he said of the tank killer, which is acclaimed as one of the most successful weapons ever developed and deployed by the Missile Command. TOW is fielded not only with the Army and Marines but with some 21 foreign countries as well.

            “Mr. TOW” is leaving amid effusive plaudits for a job well done.

            He was honored last Wednesday at a reception hosted by the Alabama Space and Rocket Center and attended by most of the MICOM staff, and several of his retired friends in the Huntsville community. Emerson Electric presented the 5,000^th TOW launcher they manufactured to the center honoring Huntzinger.

            On Thursday, Huntzinger was guest of honor at a combination farewell party for him and TOW’s 12^th anniversary, at the Officer’s Open Mess.

            Martin R. Hoffmann, Secretary of the Army, stopped by after speaking to the Tennessee Valley Chapter of AUSA, chatted with Huntzinger and family for about 10 minutes, then left to fly back to Washington.

            Lt. Gen. George Sammett, Jr., DARCOM’s Deputy Commander for Materiel Development, also flew here to pay tribute.

            Sammett, talking about project managers and how much the Army demands of them, said: “No one has done the job better than Bob Huntzinger.” Sammett told a story about how the much traveled Huntzinger always carried a large briefcase wherever he went.

            “People always assumed it was full of papers,” Sammett smiled. “Only a few knew it was filled with dirty clothes.”

            Brig. Gen. Grayson Tate, emphasizing that “…much of the credit for TOW success goes to Huntzinger—,” recalled that in the late sixties when the program appeared on the way to being cancelled, he spent many nights in Washington working on congressional presentations with the “three Bobs”—Huntzinger, Bob Whitley and Bob Taylor.

            “We are all very proud of you and what you have done for the Army,” Tate told Huntzinger.

            Hughes Aircraft, TOW prime contractor, presented him with a desk model of the TOW launcher and missile that they had gold plated.

            Huntzinger, praising Hughes for their efforts, kidded that he had often accused them, during contract negotiations, of “…gold plating the equipment.”

            The TOW project office gave him a telephone, something that “…he could never use up, and would be a constant reminder of them.”

            Huntzinger, speaking last and obviously touched by the tributes, said he was finishing a most satisfactory and interesting 25 years. He was overwhelmed, he said, to hear all the kind things said about him.

            “With the kind of team I had,” he praised, “the people in the project office, at the Missile Command, the contractors, everyone who worked so hard for TOW, there really wasn’t much left for me to do. I just had a lot of fun.”

            There is much for Huntzinger to remember and recall with pride.

            TOW recorded a first in 1972 when it was deployed in Vietnam to become the first MICOM developed missile fired in combat by American soldiers. Its performance there was phenomenal.

            TOW’s record was so good in fact, that in 1974, during a visit to Redstone, General Creighton Abrams, the then blunt and outspoken Army Chief of Staff, told Huntzinger in a MICOM conference room:

            “You’re one man who knows what he’s doing.”

            That same year, TOW won the Daedalian Award, which is presented nationally for outstanding achievement in development of military weapons.

            One of the cornerstones of the Army’s successful TOW production program, Huntzinger feels, was the decision requiring the contractor to fly a sample of each lot of missiles at Redstone to demonstrate quality and reliability.

            “The program was so successful that not a single lot of Hughes missiles failed.”

            TOW has also been a leader in competitive procurement. Every piece of TOW equipment, save one item of test equipment, has been competitively procured. All components except missile and launcher are built by small business. These actions have saved the government millions of dollars.

            Although the total TOW program now exceeds $2 billion, the end of TOW growth is nowhere in sight.

            “Although we’re assigned to the new Missile Material Readiness Command,” Huntzinger said, “more than half of our planned program is in the development phase, keyed to improvements or use in new applications.”

            Those include mounting TOW on the Army’s Cobra helicopter, fielding the system with the Iranian aircraft program, modifying for adaptation under armor in the Improved TOW Vehicle Program, and scheduled as one of the major weapons on the Army’s new Mechanized Infantry Combat Vehicle.

            “Interest in TOW is high,” he commented, “and the future looks bright.”

            Most of all, Huntzinger remembers people.

            “I’m extremely happy, of course, that I was able to make a contribution to the Army and the Free World,” he said.

            But the real credit, in his opinion, should go to the people who helped write the TOW success story.

            “I think the TOW team is the finest group of individuals, and professionals, in the Army’s project management system, barring none.”

            He concluded: