“I had always wondered about Bob,” recalled John Elwell when he met him later on, “hearing him, watching him surf and work, about his incredible mind for recall of facts, exact statements of wave heights and skill in duplicating shapes. He also had an uncanny judgment to identify a position of lineup in any surfing area.” Apparently, Simmons was eidetic and possessed a photographic mind. “There was no doubt Bob Simmons was a gifted genius,” Elwell went on, “with precise coordination, tenacious will, programmed to interpret things mathematically almost instantly. This was combined with a razorous tongue and wit, asking for no quarter and receiving no quarter. He was a fierce competitor, with one thing in mind: victory! Like most geniuses, he would be difficult to understand, and like most in history, would often be rejected.”²⁰

It was 1939 when Bob Simmons first got on a surfboard. While visiting his sister and her husband on Balboa Island, he was towed into the waves along Newport Beach, by speedboat, riding an old Tom Blake paddle board.²² He had built the hollow board from plans out of Popular Science magazine, but discontinued using it almost immediately. Instead, he bought a 150 pound solid plank from Gard Chapin and then modified it.²³

When war broke out in 1941, Simmons dropped out of the Caltech. Fellow surfer Dave Rochlen recalls that Simmons always insisted that he had attended, “Not for credit, but for knowledge, he used to say.”²⁴ One can imagine he might just have been putting “spin” on what happened, but his purpose, apparently, was to learn all he could about aero and hydro dynamics, not get a degree.

He now switched his attack and took advantage of a wartime training act, learning how to be a skilled machinist. He worked late at night which gave him the daytime for surfing. He later recalled that his early attempts at surfing were definite “dis-ass-turs.” John Elwell recalls Simmons saying, “I had to have a friend or my mother help me load the board on a car because it was so heavy. I had to drag it down the beach. You couldn’t turn them and they would pearl.”²⁵

It didn’t take Simmons long to work out alternative transportation to the beach. At one point, he used to tow a red wagon with his board on it, attached to the rear of his bicycle. From this simple transportation arrangement, Simmons went on to even hop freight trains with his board. He would travel up and down the Southern California coast that way.²⁶

During his daytimes Simmons surfed and also “went to work for Gard Chapin building garage doors,” wrote Australian champion surfer Nat Young in his History of Surfing, “and started to build his own surfboards as well. Naturally his first boards were copies of Gard’s but within a year he had developed those ideas and improved on them.”²⁷

Chapin was a member of the Palos Verdes Surf Club [PVSC] -- at that time the most well-known of all surf clubs. “He was considered one of the best surfers on the coast,” remembered Elwell. “He was aggressive, very vocal and not very well liked.”²⁸ Rennie Yater agreed: “Gard Chapin was a really good surfer. He and Simmons really didn’t get along that good. Nobody really got along good with Simmons! But, they admired each other their ability.”²⁹ Chapin would later gain renewed notoriety as the step-father of Miki “Da Cat” Dora. In the 1930s and ‘40s, however, he was known for his surfing and as one of the very best in the PVSC. Notably, in the world of surfboard design, Gard Chapin significantly changed the accepted San Onofre style of rail. The plan shapes were similar to the old San Onofre outlines but even as far back as pre-World War II, Gard was turnng the rail down in the back and using nose blocks to give lift in the nose.³⁰

Bob and Gard built and repaired traditional surfboards for mostly younger surfers who were able to enjoy the sport without the the war coming between them and the waves. “To make money,” period surfer Joe Quigg recalled, “he had started remodeling old-fashioned boards for people.”³¹

Simmons also started making some boards of his own. Probably taking the cue from Chapin, they had better rail design than the planks of the previous decade. Gard became his mentor and Simmons picked up his woodworking skills from him – as well as a lot of attitude.³²

Kit Horn was a young teenage surfer during the early days of World War II. Remembering the first time Simmons showed up at Malibu, Kit said that Simmons swam a large board out, with his left arm on the board. Simmons was 8-to-10 years older than the kids at Malibu. Most everyone his own age was either in the military or in production during the daytime. Some notable kids later became his friends; surfers like Peter and Corny Cole, Buzzy Trent and Matt Kivlin.³³

Although Simmons was a loner, he did not surf alone all the time. One of the most enthusiastic of the younger surfers during the war and after was Buzzy Trent. Buzzy would tag along with Simmons on many of his impromptu surfaris. “Together, they were a real pair –” recalls Joe Quigg’s good friend Dave Rochlen, “like the mad scientist and his big, burly side-kick Igor.”³⁴

In the early ’40s, Simmons had a stripped down ‘31 Ford, with flat bed and racks, which became the surf vehicle for he and his younger friends. “He modified fuel mixtures with kerosene to extend his mileage,” noted Elwell.³⁵During the surfaris with the 1931 Ford, Simmons racked up repeated tickets for speeding and vehicle violations.

One time when both Simmons and Trent were on surfari, during the war, and while Simmons still had his flatbed, they rode “up the coast in [Simmons’] old Model A flatbed,” wrote surf writer Craig Stecyk. “Trent needs to relieve himself in a major way, but Simmons as usual is in a hurry. The ever-innovative Buzzy climbs out on the wooden flatbed, squats over a convenient hole in the platform and begins to answer nature’s call. Other motorists are taken aback at this graphic spectacle. Bob is outraged... ‘Trent, you stupid bastard, quit shitting through that hole.’ Trent’s well-measured reply was one that could only come from a person in that state of satisfied quietude and relief, ‘OK Simmons, what do you want me to do, shit in your front seat?’ End of discussion.”³⁶

During the later part of the war, Simmons went to work as a mathematician for Douglas Aircraft. He’d leave work when the surf came up and return when it dropped and Douglas put up with it. While still working with Gard Chapin, he took over the family garage in Pasadena for his own surfboard development and research. The war was winding down and suddenly it was over. In August 1945, a big swell came in the day the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Pat O’Connor, a Los Angeles county lifeguard, remembers the day vividly. After the news of the bomb drop came over the radio, “Simmons ranted and raved all day that they would ruin the world with this new bomb. No one knew what it was, but Simmons knew something about its potential destructive powers.”³⁷

In December 1945, Simmons collided with another car at San Onofre, totaling both cars, but without injuries. Afterward, he replaced the ‘31 Ford flatbed with a '37 Ford Tudor, V-60. He gutted the Tudor out, except for the driver’s seat, made a plywood deck in it, had a wooden milk crate for a passenger seat and racked his board on top. With sleeping bag, hydro graphic charts, canned soy beans, fruit and boomerangs, he wandered and surfed the southern and some central parts of the California coastline.³⁸

Simmons refused to sleep in a bed, preferring the floor, instead. This must have had something to do with the pressure on his back. Even so, Simmons acquired a “taste for the meanest, hardest breaking shore break on the biggest days.”³⁹ Later to become the first modern surfboard builder, Simmons became a dedicated surfer who was “usually first out in the morning and last in at night.”⁴⁰

His nephew Rick recalls one particular day that demonstrated Simmons’ penchant for the big, gnarly stuff despite his handicap. It was after he got known for his surfing and shaping. He was taking a pounding, but fully stoked on the smashing he was receiving, after making some fantastic takeoffs. A lifeguard came down the beach, angrily ordering him out of the water and lecturing him on how dangerous it was. Lastly, he demanded to know his name. When Simmons told him, Rick recalls the lifeguard stammering and then apologizing. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know it was you.”⁴¹

In early 1946, Joe Quigg and his former Santa Monica High School classmate Dave Rochlen visited Simmons at his garage. Rochlen was on leave from the Marines. “Dave and I got curious about Simmons,” said Quigg. “We were still into surfing, and we heard he was building boards in his garage in Pasadena, so we drove over to see what he was up to.” They found Simmons in the process of building three traditional redwood surfboards. “At that time,” said Quigg, “he was still selling and talking up big, heavy boards, the same kind we’d always used.”⁴²

Quigg admitted that, in those days, he wasn’t too impressed by Simmons. However, Dave Rochlen said, “When we first met Simmons, we knew he was different. We knew he was somehow special, and we knew he was up to something. We called him a mad scientist.”⁴³ Importantly, Simmons was just about “the only guy anybody could buy boards from during those [war] years.”⁴⁴

In 1946, many of the technological developments used during the war to enhance the country’s military capabilities came out on the open market. “Most important to Simmons and surfboard history,” wrote Elwell, “was a publication by one of the finest US naval architects, Lindsey Lord, a Ph.D. from MIT who did an intensive study on planing hulls. Most of the work was done in Hawaii, with the initial phases using simple shapes looking like body boards. Surfboards were used also. Simmons had somehow acquired a copy. Lord’s study was remarkable. The Navy had sought an ideal width and length shape for quick lift, maneuverability and speed. Lord maintained the study was solid information and a new, not previously known, naval science.

“Simmons must have been delighted,” wrote Elwell. “The book was full of graphs, complex equations and recommended a new material to strengthen lightweight planing hulls: fiberglass and resin. The form developed was simple parallelism, with an ideal length-width ratio number called aspect ratio...

“One of the problems, Lord relates, concerned the ideal shape. It was not attractive, but could be. He mentions that pointed sterns produce the most drag, extreme lightness is dangerous, and planing hulls are complex. He warned that a few weird things work, but don’t be fooled... everything modified to get something else... is a compromise. All things were considered and applied for the ultimate goal of superlative speed; such as the nature of water, skimming on it, Newton’s Laws, Bernoulli’s Law of Lift, resistance, load, attack angles, rudder designs and center of gravity. The book was the mother lode for Simmons. Many surfers saw it in Simmons’ possession, but couldn’t understand it, much less apply it to surfboards. Simmons told me he went to a boat show and a salesman for fiberglass showed him the material and described its application and use. He located an outlet and purchased the material downtown. He was quite matter of fact about it. The materials were being marketed all over the country.”⁴⁵

Besides being a naval architect from MIT, writing the Naval Architecture of Planing Hulls and using the Simmons strain gauge, Lindsey Lord had first become “famous for designing fast rum planing boats during prohibition and later [was] commissioned to improve US Navy's speed attack boats in Hawaii, some of the experiments were using surfboards. Actually, those things like surfboards are called plates, work on Bernoulli Law.”⁴⁶

Lord’s study and the fundamental changes to surfboard design that Simmons was to make are connected mainly to Newton’s Laws of Motion and Bernoulli’s Law of Lift:

Sir Isaac Newton’s Three Laws of Motion were first published in 1687 and have been tested and verified many times. They are:

Simmons was a frequent visitor to the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, in La Jolla. As important to Simmons as Lord’s publication on planing hulls, was a wealth of new scientific research on wave mechanics. During the war, the Navy had had a desperate need to predict waves for the success of amphibious landings. Dr. Walter Munk, a world renown oceanographer and an expert on waves did some work for the Navy in this regard, including using Simmons’ brother Dewey’s strain gage to record wave pressure.⁵⁰ Munk had also, coincidentally, been a classmate of Simmons’ at Caltech and, at this time, was married to one of Gard Chapin’s surfing sisters. He was assisted by Towne “Tommy” Cromwell, a young oceanographer and a very fine and well-liked surfer from Windansea.⁵¹Munk and colleagues published their research and it was from these that, “Simmons found out what he was really dealing with in surfboard design.”⁵²

Interestingly, another Simmons/Munk classmate at Caltech had been Hugh Bradner, a physicist who worked on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. He went to Scripps afterwards and worked with Munk to invent the wet suit for the U.S. Navy.⁵³

A little while after Simmons got his hands on Lord’s planing hulls study, both he and Chapin started modifying the planks they were working on with nose applications of fiberglass. Out in the surf, they were overtaking and passing everyone else, “proclaiming planning hull design,” Elwell wrote. “Those who got in the way and did not heed their abusive warnings were rammed. Chapin evidently got away with it. Simmons was dunked and beaten up in Malibu, punched down at San Onofre and stoned on the trail to Palos Verdes Cove. He returned in the evening with an axe and drove it into some paddle boards that were lying around; ostensibly belonging to the stoners. Vandalism to the boards on his car by Palos Verdes surfers occurred in retaliation.”⁵⁵ It’s interesting to note that Mickey Dora, who became well-known for shoving people out of his way later on at Malibu, may have learned his attitude from his step father Gard and Bob Simmons.

Simmons’ first real departure from the traditional surfboard plan shape was the scarfed nose, using fiberglass and resin. Surfers who rode a board with a scarfed nose acknowledged that the nose lift helped keep the board from pearling. Soon Simmons had others wanting him to make modifications to their own boards and “scarf another piece on the nose and fair it in to create nose lift.”⁵⁶

The use of fiberglass in surfboard construction was just beginning.

“Preston ‘Pete’ Peterson was actually the first person to build a fibreglass surfboard,” wrote famed Australian surfer Nat Young, and “he did this in June 1946 with the help of Brant Goldsworthy, who had a plastics company in Los Angeles which supplied component parts for aircraft in World War II. The board was constructed of two hollow moulded halves joined together with a redwood central stringer and with the seam sealed with fibreglass tape.”⁵⁷

“Brant Goldsworthy and his partner Ted Thal,” continued Young, “were the first to sell fibreglass and resin to the private sector. The first resin manufacturer was the Bakelite Corporation. Those early resins were the same viscosity as the resins used today but the catalyst was a paste-like vaseline that had to be thoroughly mixed with the resin. The drying time was totally dependent on the amount of sunshine and naturally one side dried while the rails were still tacky. Because it made the boards look ugly compared to the shiny varnish already available it took a little time to gain acceptance, but, because resin was much more protective, change was inevitable... [Joe] Quigg remembers walking into Ted Thal’s one-room shop (now a huge corporation) and seeing little bottles of stuff that had just arrived at the Thalco Chemical Company. Ted didn’t know what it was, but the label read ‘setting fluid - highly explosive’ and that made him suspect it was the catalyst he needed. Joe pleaded with Thal to let him have some; Thal, however, declined. Frustrated, Joe remembered that one of his friends, Dave Sweet, had an uncle who was in the plastics department of Douglas Aircraft so Joe persuaded Dave to contact his uncle and get some setting fluid. When Joe came back to Dave’s house a couple of days later he saw Dave in the backyard putting out a fire which had occurred from a particularly hot mix! Because it was proving so hard to get he drove back to Ted Thal’s office, identified the suspicious stuff in the little bottles, and persuaded Thal to part with it and some other funny stuff called pigment or tint.”⁵⁸

Radical changes occurred in Simmons’ boards after 1946. The rails were coming down, tails and noses were thinner, but they were still basically modified planks. But, Simmons took design further by developing the first twin fin boards with concave bottoms, and later experimenting with nose and tail contours and rounded rails.⁵⁹

Along with Simmons’ research and development came testing. He tested his boards all over Southern California. He was seen in Solana Beach, in the San Diego area, throwing his boomerangs off the cliffs there. He frequented the San Diego County Lifeguard HQ and often took all comers in ping pong, beating most everyone with his left wired locked elbow.⁶¹

Such ping pong session is one Craig Stecyk wrote as occurring on September 16, 1947. Supposedly a Tuesday night at the Hollywood Tables on Highland Boulevard, Simmons battled it out with then-upcoming board shaper and Manhattan Beach local Dale “The Hawk” Velzy. The Hawk had accepted Simmons’ challenge to “come and see some real ping pong.” They played for a 19-cent can of cling peaches.

“Out of my way, you fucking kook. I’m coming through or over, it’s your choice,” was the kind of attitude Simmons exhibited. This session was the first of many to follow, as the two developed a routine of ping pong playing while arguing over board design late into the evening.⁶²

“Some surfer-observers of that period,” wrote surf writer Leonard Lueras, “say that Simmons was compelled to modify the shapes and weights of his surfboards because of his handicap. It was hard for him to use the heavy redwood and pine paddleboards then in vogue; he was constantly trying to make his one-armed surfing easier.”⁶³

“Witnesses and photographs exist,” countered Elwell, “attesting to the fact that Simmons’ “left arm was now indistinguishable from his right. He paddled with a dip with the left shoulder to get extension and sometimes used a bar of paraffin to extend his reach. He had a strong paddle. No one passed him, and a good set of shoulders were developed. His legs were very strong. His swimming, however, was an unorthodox stroke without full extension and rotation. He was definitely handicapped in this department. He kept his head up, stroked underwater with the left arm dragging and slashing. This did not deter him from surfing the biggest surf, skirting rips, making his way through powerful shore break. He surfed with the best watermen on the coast and no one ever worried about him.

“Many years later in surf media, his arm became surf folklore and ‘withered,’ and he became known as a ‘one-armed surfer,’ a ‘terrible swimmer, who most likely drowned because he couldn’t swim,’ and a ‘cripple’ – all were myths.”⁶⁴

 Simmons Twin Fin

By 1948, Mike Johnson, a friend of Simmons’ who became a surfer, said that Simmons had a board down to nine pounds and was testing it at the Caltech test tank. Kit Horn substantiated that it was at this time that Simmons came down to Malibu with the first really radical board.⁶⁵

“Simmons was reported to be going so fast that his boards would become airborne and go out of control,” wrote Elwell. “He had pushed the high aspect ratio and lightness to the limit. To correct this he increased weight and rebalanced his boards.

“The new boards had unusual features. They were vastly lighter. The noses and tails were thin and featured hydrofoil rails. They were wide and with wide, slightly pulled-in tails. The nose had an increased turn up with a camber and slight belly in them.”⁶⁶

Simmons called these “hydrodynamic planing hulls.” He did not elaborate further, but it was obvious they combined elements based on the laws of physics and never seen before. “A new profile emerged,” wrote Elwell. “The profile allowed the shedding of many pounds, immersing the tail for a better attack angle. The tails were wide and thin, giving quick lift for planing. The rail allowed for penetration into the wave and giving improved deflection, readily seen in early photographs.

“The results were phenomenal. The boards picked up waves quickly, were stable, easy to paddle and turn and had great speed. They were very easy to surf. It was clear that Simmons had applied some distinctly new combinations. These factors were confused by observers to be lightness due to materials, although lightness is only part of the whole. Hydrodynamic qualities result from form that gives dynamic lift.”⁶⁷

Simmons continued to receive visitors to his shaping area. “It was up in Pasadena where I found that Bob Simmons was,” recalled Rennie Yater. “Some kid that lived around the corner said, ‘Hey, this guy Bob Simmons’ lived down in the south part of Pasadena. So, one day a couple of weeks later – it must have been 1948 – I went down there to South Oakland Avenue; found him working in his garage. And here’s all these different looking surfboards, more than I’ve ever, ever seen before. I was awed, to say the least.

“It wasn’t long after that that I bought one of the boards he had modified. He put a scoop nose on an old board. I think it was at least 40-pounds lighter than the last thing I’d been riding. I’d been riding 90-pounds and this thing was, like, 50. That was a big jump. Then I got really serious about surfing.

“Bob Simmons absolutely fascinated me, because he was a person who wouldn’t go with tradition at all. He was out there on his own brain wave. I used to go down there, once in a while, you know? Watch him work, talk with him. He was an arrogant type of guy. Sometimes he really wanted to talk and other times he did not want to talk at all and he’d tell you so. But, when he did talk, he was really interesting to listen to...

“When his boards started showing up at San Onofre, they couldn’t believe it. Such a traditional place. Everything had to look the same, ride the same, pose the same... Simmons’ boards weren’t welcome at San Onofre. See, his influence was more at Malibu. He could care less about the San Onofre area. He always went up and tested his stuff at Malibu or Palos Verdes Cove...

“To go back a little farther,” Rennie continued, “Simmons worked for Gard Chapin. He had a garage door business, as I remember. So, Simmons had access to a lot of different materials. They used plywood a lot for garage doors. Simmons finally came up with this – probably the first production line other than Pacific Systems – the first production line surfboard that had a foam [expanded polystyrene] core, balsa wood rails, and plywood deck. He came up with that idea probably because of all the influence he had from plywood... mahogany veneers on the outside to get them even lighter. He did incredible things for the time he did ‘em in, compared to today. He’s also fortunate to come out of the Second World War. Fiberglass was a revolutionary product to come out of the war. See, here comes this material on the open market. So, he now had access to that.”⁶⁸

Simmons never attempted to fully explain his designs to anyone because they were “complex and the applications were simple, and could be modified,” wrote John Elwell. “He was also secretive and didn’t trust some people.” His brother Dewey had a long legal battle over his invention of the electrical strain gage and this was probably ever-present in his brother’s mind. Elwell, who knew him, also feels “There was also some delight in baffling some of the rule of thumb, surfing know-it-alls. There was no doubt he rejected exaggerators and dreamers on the beach. He gravitated to the better surfers and ignored the less serious and unskilled.”⁶⁹

“Basically,” wrote Elwell, “Simmons was dealing with others having a ‘Beach Boy Mentality.’ As Jim Voit, a surfer, lifeguard, his friend who became an engineer said, ‘Simmons would just laugh at those guys!’

In 1947, Simmons had started messing around with Styrofoam -- a new material at that time. Foam had been used during World War II, molded into fuselage radar domes. Simmons located the raw chemical sources from a government or corporate agency, then went about building a cement mold in the ground. With this, he blew his own foam to make “styrofoam core sandwich boards,”⁷¹using a plywood lid topped by five large rocks. Elwell recalls seeing these blanks, in 1950, at the lifeguard station at Imperial Beach. The mold still exists by a barn on his late uncle and aunt’s ranch in Norwalk. Here he experimented with designs and shapes. The location afforded him a place to keep tools and have a large work space.⁷²

Simmons Sandwich

Joe Quigg said it was 1949 when Matt Kivlin began talking to Simmons about the idea of making light weight, hollow plywood rescue boards.⁷³“Simmons thought that was interesting, but instead of simply making the boards hollow he began sandwiching styrofoam between plywood and glassing the whole thing over.” The drawback with styrofoam, however, was that it would dissolve once catalyzed resin was poured onto it, so the two together turned out to be impractical. By sandwiching styrofoam in between plywood, however, Simmons made it viable.⁷⁴“The first couple of boards of this type,” wrote Elwell, “had 50/50 rail lines,