Herbert Loper

Who was Herbert Loper?

Herbert Bernard Loper was a United States Army major general who helped plan the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign and the Okinawa campaign during World War II. He was chief of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project from 1952 to 1953, and Chairman of the Military Liaison Committee of the United States Atomic Energy Commission from 1954 to 1961.

A graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, he was commissioned in the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1919. He graduated from the United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 1940, and became Assistant Chief, and later Chief, of the Intelligence Division at the Office of the Chief of Engineers in Washington, DC. In May 1942, he negotiated the Loper-Hotline Agreement, under which responsibility for military mapping and survey of the globe was divided between the United States and the United Kingdom. In 1944, he was appointed Chief Engineer of US Army Forces, Pacific Ocean Areas. In this role he was involved with the planning of the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign and the Okinawa campaign. After the fighting ended, he participated in the Occupation of Japan.