He then spent two years as the executive officer of the battleship USS West Virginia (BB-48), before studying in the senior class of the Naval War College.

In February 1932 he received promotion to captain, and was Chief of Staff, Destroyers, United States Pacific Fleet from 1932 to 1934.

[5] In 1937 Theobald was appointed commanding officer of the battleship USS Nevada (BB-36), then served as Chief of Staff to Admiral Claude C. Bloch, the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Fleet, in 1939.

[5] On the morning of December 7, 1941, twenty ships of Destroyer Flotilla One were moored at Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, when the Japanese attacked.

[8] After World War II, Theobald gained considerable notoriety with his 1954 book The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor: The Washington Background of the Pearl Harbor Attack, which accused the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of suppressing intelligence about the attack in order to bring the United States into the war.

[12] Robert Theobald Jr. was also a graduate of the United States Naval Academy (1931) and achieved the rank of captain in the U.S.