William R. Smanko
Aeronautical engineer, Air Force veteran and vice president at Westinghouse Electric ‘learned to fly before he could drive’
William R. Smanko, an aeronautical engineer who had been vice president and general manager of Westinghouse Electric Corp.’s Command, Control, and Communications Division, died of dysphagia Feb. 8 at the Blakehurst retirement community in Towson. He was 94.
William Russell Smanko, son of George Smanko, a factory worker, and Elizabeth Smanko, a homemaker, was born in Woodbridge, New Jersey, and moved with his family in 1938 to Rahway, New Jersey, where he graduated in 1945 from Rahway High School.
Immediately after graduation, when he was 17, he joined the Navy V-5 flight-training program and “learned to fly before he could drive,” according to a family biographical profile.
While in the V-5 program, Mr. Smanko attended Denison University in Granville, Ohio, Union College in Schenectady, New York, and Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
In 1951, Mr. Smanko earned a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering from St. Louis University in Missouri and was immediately called to active duty as a young Air Force lieutenant. He served as a research and development engineer at Wright Air Development Center in Dayton, Ohio, for two years, until being discharged in 1953.
After leaving the Air Force, he joined Westinghouse Electric Corp.’s Defense and Space Group as a sales engineer in its Baltimore-based Air Arms Division in 1953.
During his 35 year career with Westinghouse, Mr. Smanko held management positions in marketing and program management which took him to Pittsburgh where he lived for eight years.
In 1977, he was appointed vice president of the company’s Westinghouse Defense and Space Center and general manager of its Systems Development Division.
Mr. Smanko was named managing director in 1979 of a Westinghouse led consortium of American, British, French and Dutch companies that was based in London, where he developed an enduring love of the city.
He was fascinated with the history that surrounded him in London, family members said, and one of his favorite quotes about the city was from Dr. Samuel Johnson, the 18th century English writer and bon vivant, who wrote: “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”
Mr. Smanko’s work took him to 37 states and 28 countries, and he enjoyed interacting with the dignitaries who attended the annual Paris Air Show and the British Air Show that is held in Farnborough, England.
Mr. Smanko often said this experience was at the top of his “job satisfaction rating.”
He worked with the British military on projects such as the United Kingdom Air Defense Ground Environment and AWG-10 radar, which enabled F-4 Phantoms to launch Sidewinder and Sparrow Guided missiles in all types of weather.
Other international work included radar projects in Morocco, Jordan and Egypt.
Appointed general manager of the Command, Control, and Communication Division in 1981, his work was largely with ground radars. He retired from Westinghouse in 1988.
“His career spanned the technology from vacuum tubes to transistors through integrated circuits, which today we call ‘the chips,’” according to his biography.
“He was involved in many of the products and programs that were household names in the industry. Fire control systems for the F-4 Phantom and the F-16; low light television cameras that were used in Vietnam and recorded Neil Armstrong’s first-step on the moon to the entire world; and the incredible airborne warning and control system that the world knew as AWACS [Airborne Early Warning System].”
The former Timonium, Upper St. Clair, Pennsylvania, and Ruxton resident, who later settled in Baltimore County’s Charlesbrooke neighborhood, was a man of endless curiosity.
In his retirement, Mr. Smanko learned Japanese and Russian and continued traveling widely, family members said.
“When we went to Japan in 2000, he had a school teacher friend there who took us all around to various cities, and he learned Japanese for the trip,” said a daughter, Nancy A. Smanko, of Belvedere Square. “We went two other times to see Japanese baseball, the last time being 2008.”
He was also an avid tennis player who liked working with his computer and managing his investments.
Mr. Smanko’s wife of 56 years, the former Susan Mary Infantino, a homemaker, died in 2021.
Funeral services with full military honors were held Tuesday at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens.
He is survived by three daughters, Nancy A. Smanko of Belvedere Square, Barbara S. Cassler of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Patricia L. Krause of Jackson, Wyoming; and seven grandchildren.