Robert Irving Sarbacher, genius scientist

Long-time Townsend Brown inquirer Jan Lundquist – aka 'Rose' in The Before Times – has her own substantial archive to share with readers and visitors to this site. This forum is dedicated to the wealth of material she has compiled: her research, her findings, and her speculations.
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Robert Irving Sarbacher, genius scientist

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Robert Irving Sarbacher and Townsend Brown were known to be close associates for a while during the mid-fifties. During the week, Townsend lived in DC and worked out of Sarbacher's DC lab, the Washington Institute of Technology. On weekends, Dr. Sarbacher often drove him home to Virginia where Jo and Linda lived. Sarbacher also picked Townsend up upon his return from his second Paris trip, took him home for a half hour visit, before whisking him away again. We don't know where he went, nor what he did for the next 12 months, but it was that long before his family saw him again.

Sarbacher's capsule bio from The Georgia Tech Alumnus Vol. XXVIII MAY - JUNE 1950 No. 5
[url]file:///Users/Admin/Downloads/GT_Alumni_Mag_28_5-1.pdf[/url]
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Re: Robert Irving Sarbacher, Obit

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Palm Beach Daily News, 31 July,1986

https://www.newspapers.com/image/299123 ... wuCohnD7eU
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Re: Robert Irving Sarbacher, author

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Re: Robert Irving Sarbacher, inventor

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Harvard seems to credit him with the invention of a wattmeter for GE in 1940
http://waywiser.fas.harvard.edu/people/ ... 27/objects

However, he held the patents on a number of other devices, as well. Most of them are a matter of public record, but for now, I will leave it to the interested reader to dig them up.
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Re: Robert Irving Sarbacher, UFO confirmation

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Sarbacher was the first and most creditable scientist to acknowledge the existence of a UFO research program, being conducted at the highest levels of government during the Eisenhower years. He states that Vannevar Bush, John Von Neumman and, perhaps Robert Oppenheimer were involved. The letter has been reproduced in many places. I picked it up at...
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[Webmaster note: the link Jan provided here was a tad wonky, so I found the document elsewhere and have uploaded it to our own server. It can now be found here: https://www.ttbrown.com/files/sarbacher ... 831129.pdf This .pdf includes a photocopy of the original letter from Sarbacher > Steinman, and a retyped, easier to read version. We return you now to your regularly scheduled programming.]
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He speculates that the "aliens" (his quotation marks, not mine) might be constructed like certain insects we have on earth.


Have you ever seen a more insect-like "construction"?
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Re: Robert Irving Sarbacher -- WWII mission?

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Thank you, Paul. What have we been told about Sarbacher? Pulling from memory, please correct me on my "facts" concerning his presence in Germany at the end of the war.

In the immediate, post war period, the Allies were grabbing all the information and technology, and scientists they they could get before German Boundaries were redrawn and frozen.
As the European war drew to a climax....A number of intelligence operations, planned to become operational as soon as practicable in the event of a German collapse, were designed to seize the intellectual property of the Third Reich. Loosely coordinated by the Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee a number of these operations such as ALSOS, which searched for nuclear information and research, OVERCAST, dedicated to the capture of rockets, and SURGEON, the search for avionics and jet technology, were planned. These operations were well documented in both popular and academic literature after the war. However, a lesser-known operation, TICOM, which targeted the capture of German signals intelligence organizations remained top secret and to this day remains shrouded in mystery.
http://www.ticomarchive.com/home/origin-of-ticom

Twigsnapper was a Royal Marine assigned to escort/protect Townsend on his mission. I would guess he was part of Assault Unit 30:
The group's title harks back to the original 30 Commando (which in turn became 30 Assault Unit RM), formed in 1942. This unit was tasked to move ahead of advancing Allied forces, or to undertake covert infiltrations into enemy territory by land, sea or air, to capture much needed intelligence, in the form of codes, documents, equipment or enemy personnel.
Townsend had been sent in to evaluate a scientist, who, presumably claimed to have expertise that only he could verify.

We have been told that Twignsnapper was pulled off the mission because Lieutenant Commander Howard Campaigne did not think Royal Marines should be providing mission security for an American Scientist. USNR Campaigne was the senior naval intelligence officer on TICOM 1.

http://www.ticomarchive.com/the-teams/team-1
(for more on Campaigne, see https://jansrose.blogspot.com/2011/12/h ... that.html)

Reportedly, Sarbacher was in the near vicinity when Townsend was captured and his "men" are the ones who came to the rescue. Coincidentally? Sarbacher knew the scientist involved because, as young men, the two of them had once traveled around Italy together. (on motorcycles, or have I conflated two stories?)

But when I look at Sarbacher's WWII history I find nothing. The closest matching narrative comes from Chapter 8 of The Hunt for German Scientists. Author Michel Bar-Zohar says that a Robert B. Staver was put in charge of a U.S. scientific snatch and grab mission to Germany in April and May of 1945, as WW II was winding to a close. Zohar also states that one of Staver's colleagues in this hunt was 'an engineer named Hull [emphasis mine]. No other name, rank, or mission has been given for this engineer.

There is not much to be learned about Staver, either. I find no mention of him during the war, until the very end. He is often described as Chief of the Jet Propulsion Section of the Research and Intelligence Branch of the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps. (bullets, rockets, a-bombs and such(.Sounds like a pretty smart guy.
Major Robert Staver from the Rocket Section of the Research and Development branch of the Ordinance Office was tasked in directing the effort to find and interrogate the German rocket specialists who had built the V-2. Since April 30 he had been in the Nordhausen area searching the smaller laboratories for V-2 technicians....On May 14, Staver found Walther Riedel, head of the Peenemünde rocket motor and structural design section, who urged the Americans to import perhaps 40 of the top V-2 engineers to America....On May 22, 1945, he transmitted to the U.S. Department of War Colonel Joel Holmes' telegram urging the evacuation of German scientists and their families, as most "important for [the] Pacific war" effort.


https://www.v2rocket.com/start/chapters/backfire.html


Holmes was, at that time, the Chief of the Technical Division for Ordnance (bullets and bombs) for the European Theater.https://goordnance.army.mil/hof/1990/1990/holmes.html Yet Staver, a lowly Major, felt free to boot his bosses telegram up to a higher power. Consequently, Staver is credited with initiating Operation Paper Clip, which brought 127 German scientists to the US.

But given his reported expertise, I was surprised too be able to find zero mention of any Robert Staver in the defense and aerospace world after 1945. He is a man whose history has been nearly erased.

Could Staver have been Sarbacher's legend at the time of this mission? Everything else dovetails so neatly with what we know of him.

One more tidbit about Sarbacher. He introduced himself as Irving before the war and as Bob, forever afterward.
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Re: Robert Irving Sarbacher -- WWII mission?

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Jan Lundquist wrote: Thu Feb 02, 2023 7:39 pm Thank you, Paul. What have we been told about Sarbacher? Pulling from memory, please correct me on my "facts" concerning his presence in Germany at the end of the war.
I'm nose to the grindstone on the proof-read right now. I have some stuff on Sarbacher that did not make it to the revised edition, like that story about his trip through Italy with VonLuck (I think I have that right) and the supposed association with the Beluzzo family etc etc. Memory is a bit vague at the moment.

When I get the manuscript off to the next phase, I'll rummage around a bit at and see what else I can find.

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Re: Robert Irving Sarbacher, Radar expert?

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In scrolling through the (many) old newspaper records concerning Sarbacher, I find many that mention his atomic science expertise, but most are vague about his WWII experience. However, this one says that he was head of the Navy's Radar research program during WWII.
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Re: Sarbacher's Aromic Research Permit

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Between 1948 and 1950, Sarbacher operated a laboratory in a home in a residentia DC neighboorhood. The lab had a permit to conduct atomic research. This permit was renewed for another two years, in 1950. However, that was the year that he took the job as Dean of Engineering for Georgia Tech, while acting as an advisor to Oak Ridge atomic research center. I do not know what happened to his DC lab.
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Re: Robert Irving Sarbacher, genius scientist

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Well now, isn't THAT interesting...

Nice work Jan. Where do you find all this stuff???

--P
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Re: Robert Irving Sarbacher, genius scientist

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Thanks, Paul. Knowing that Sarbacher is said to have been a student of Einstein's makes him an intriguing character to me. Of those knowm to be in Townsend's inner circle (which also included Beau, Ed Hull, Mason Rose and Bradford Shank) he is the one about whom the most has been written. Bradford Shank, on the other hand, is a near ghost.

I have been digging for a while, now, but a subscription to Newspapers.com, and a lot of patience goes a long way.
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Re: Robert Irving Sarbacher at age 65

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Another admiring profile of Robert Sarbacher written in 1977. By this time in his life, he has dropped "Irving" altogether. He seems peeved at the AEC for not following up on the commercial uses for depleted uranium, but he is enthusiastic about his newly developed enzyme activated sequential battery.
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Re: Robert Irving Sarbacher: When he tells you what he does, believe him.

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The above 1950 article says Sarbacher was a director of "The National Labs, Inc", which had been doing atomic research at 2010 Massachussetts Ave for the past 2 years. It is worth noting that Linda remembered that Sarbacher's "Washinton Institure of Technology" lab as being located on Dupont Circle. (Note that 2010 Mass Ave, NW could only be closer to Dupont Circle if it were planted in the greenery of the roundabout landscaping.) The other end of Mass Ave is also known as Embassy Row.

The National Labs (Livermore, Berkeley, Los Alamos, Argonne, Oak Ridge, and Brookhaven) had been placed under the control of the newly created, civilian Atomic Energy Commission in 1948. The AEC would have first dibs on the best research and pass it off to the DoD for further development.

Sarbacher's research work may have been In addition to, or as part of other Atomic Energy was being done in NW Washington, at the Carnegie Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, which had successfully split an atom in their Atom Smasher in 1939. The machine was in use until 1975.
AtomSmasher.jpg
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/ma ... story.html
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