Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.misc From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: ADMIRAL RICKOVER Date: Sun, 15 Nov 92 16:56:27 EST Message-ID: \SE B;BOOKS \HD ADMIRAL RICKOVER \SH Despised yet respected, he carved his niche \BY Philip Gold Benjamin Disraeli, a 19th-century British politician and a baptized Jew operating in a decidedly hostile milieu, once remarked that there were two ways of dominating men. One can either surpass them, or else despise their accomplishments. Hyman Rickover did both. The "father of the nuclear Navy," a self-described "125-pound Jew" who never saw combat and never commanded anything larger than a minesweeper, by force of will, guile, and a monomaniacal faith in his mission, won four stars and remained on active duty until age 82. Along the way, he became something of a national icon, revered as much for his ego and his enemies as for his accomplishments. Time, however, has not been altogether kind. Rickover lived long enough to receive an official (post-retirement) reprimand for accepting gifts from defense contractors, and to sense the beginnings of an anti-Rickover historiography. The man was not only borderline something-or-other, a spate of books and memoirs would contend; his overall influence on the Navy - especially his insistence on the primacy of technical excellence - was baleful. And, hey, the nuclear stuff would have happened eventually, anyway. In "The Rickover Effect," Theodore Rockwell, one of Rickover's key subordinates during the nuclear power program's crucial first decades, attempts to restore some balance. The book is not hagiography. Toward the end, Mr. Rockwell wonders how he and his colleagues ever put up with that man's abuse, demands and peculiarities. Nor is it light reading. Mr. Rockwell, an engineer, writes like an engineer, and much of his effort concerns technical matters. Still, perused lightly, the book makes for an interesting parable. Mr. Rockwell wisely eschews psychobiography, and notes how seldom Rickover discussed himself. But the facts of the man's pre-nuclear life point to certain conclusions. Rickover, the child of poor Jewish immigrants, went to Annapolis because he stumbled upon the chance; it was free education and little more. From the beginning, he endured vicious anti-Semitism. (One dictionary of famous admirals, conceding the bigotry, asserts that it contributed to Rickover's "obnoxious" style.) Yet he graduated, served his time, and made the Navy his career, fully aware of the emotional cost and that the ordinary satisfactions of the service would never be his. He did it on his own terms, as an engineering officer of almost legendary competence - out of the action, not one of the boys, but far too valuable to waste. Indeed, he seems to have learned to thrive in that status. The year 1946 found Rickover a captain, respected but not very promotable. The Navy ordered him to spend a few months as a student at the Oak Ridge nuclear complex as part of a feeble Navy attempt to find out what this nuclear stuff (still an Army monopoly) was about, and how it might affect inter-service rivalries, especially with the soon-to-be-created Air Force. There, Rickover found his calling. Great breakthroughs seem obvious only in retrospect. In the early postwar years, the U.S. nuclear program still emphasized bombs; power generation remained theoretical. To the extent that the Navy considered nuclear propulsion at all, the admirals favored surface applications, especially for carriers (their most potent weapon against the Air Force). Almost single-handedly, Rickover seems to have understood three things. First, nuclear propulsion could make submarines true undersea ships, not merely surface vessels with a limited capacity for submerged operation. Second, if a reactor could fit into a submarine and operate in that demanding environment, scaling it up for surface ships would be relatively easy. And third, naval propulsion could ease the way for commercial applications. The Navy balked. Rickover was determined to make it happen. Nuclear propulsion would be his kingdom for the rest of his life, his gift to the Navy and his weapon against it. First, Rickover carved himself a bureaucratic niche within the Navy. Then he got himself double-hatted as part of the new Atomic Energy Commission. Then he began an assiduous, skillful cultivation of Congress (which paid off when the Navy tried to pass him over for flag rank). Most of all, he made himself the absolute expert on nuclear power. In a few years, he had it all: two vital products (naval and commercial nuclear reactors), a firm base, powerful allies, fame. The Navy never forgave him. And their resentment deepened as Rickover assumed control over personnel selection for the nuclear submarine force (his "character-testing" antics at interviews are legendary). But, as his men rose through specially created schools, and the submarine fleet into the Navy's upper echelons, his antics ceased to be amusing. In many ways, nuclear submariners, with their Rickover-bred insistence on technical excellence, first and last, were the antithesis of the standard "generalist" officer. And as they began to wrest control of the Navy from the boat drivers and jet jockeys, not a few (former Navy Secretary John Lehman among them) felt that the service was losing its soul. Meanwhile, Rickover fretted that America was losing hers. His dissatisfaction with Navy schooling had led him to create his own system. Soon, he began wondering what America's high schools and colleges were sending him - bland conformists, skilled at test-taking but unable to apply their knowledge, and woefully undereducated in the humanities which (contrary to image) Rickover valued. He was one of the first to understand that American education had become a bureaucratic, wasteful, incompetent mess. But Rickover-as-man is only half of Mr. Rockwell's theme. By the "Rickover Effect," the author means the bow wave of innovation and reform that flowed from Rickover's projects: everything from technical advances in related fields to new educational standards and ways of doing business. In sum, Mr. Rockwell concludes, Rickover's career validates the old cliche that "one man can make a difference." Perhaps. But the greatest lesson of the Rickover story may be the incredible price one must pay in order to make that difference. Rickover paid it, indeed, came to glory in it. Rickover, that quintessence of ruthlessness and ego, refused to tolerate mediocrity, or to employ those who would not respond to his demand for their souls. At a safe distance, it can seem inspiring. Philip Gold is a fellow of Seattle's Discovery Institute and teaches at Georgetown University. ***** THE RICKOVER EFFECT: HOW ONE MAN MADE A DIFFERENCE By Theodore Rockwell Naval Institute Press, $24.95, 411 pages, illus. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM