Hyman G. Rickover Totally Explained

Everything about Hyman G Rickover totally explained

Admiral Hyman George Rickover, United States Navy, (January 27, 1900 or August 24, 1898 – July 8, 1986) was known as the "Father of the Nuclear Navy", which as of July 2007 had produced 200 nuclear-powered submarines, and 23 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and cruisers, though many of these U.S. vessels are now decommissioned and others under construction.
With his unique personality, political connections, responsibilities and depth of knowledge regarding naval nuclear propulsion, Rickover became the longest-serving active duty military officer in U.S. history with 63 years of continuous service.
Rickover's substantial legacy of technical achievements includes the United States Navy's continuing record of zero reactor accidents, as defined by the uncontrolled release of fission products subsequent to reactor core damage. (External Link

)

Childhood

Hyman Rickover was born to a Jewish family in Maków Mazowiecki of Poland, but at that time and prior to World War I under Russian occupation. The surname Rickover is derived from the village and the estate of Ryki, located within an hour of Warsaw as is Maków Mazowiecki. The entire Jewish community of Ryki as well as that of Maków Mazowiecki were killed or otherwise died during The Holocaust. The Admiral's first name is derived from the Hebrew word חַיִּים (Chayyim) meaning "life."
Escaping the fate of his fellow ethnic citizens, well before World War I the young Rickover immigrated to the United States with his parents, Abraham Rickover and Rachel (née Unger) Rickover, in 1905 after fleeing anti-Semitic pogroms. Living initially on the seething East Side of Manhattan, the family moved two years later to Lawndale, a community of Chicago, where his father continued his work as a tailor. Rickover began work to help support the family at nine years of age, and later said of his childhood that it was a time of "hard work, discipline, and a decided lack of good times."(External Link

) (External Link

) While attending John Marshall High School in Chicago, where he graduated with honors in 1918, Rickover held a full-time job delivering Western Union telegrams, through which he became acquainted with U.S. Congressman Adolph J. Sabath. By way of the intervention of a family friend, Sabath, himself a Czech Jewish immigrant, nominated Rickover for appointment to the United States Naval Academy.(External Link

) Though only a third alternate for a coveted plebe appointment, through disciplined self-directed study and good fortune the future four-star admiral passed the entrance exam and was accepted.(External Link

)(External Link

)

Early naval career through World War II

Rickover was commissioned as an Ensign after graduating 107th out of 540 midshipmen in 1922. While awaiting transportation to his first ship on the west coast via the Panama Canal, he received a scholarship to take courses in history and psychology at the University of Chicago. Before reporting to his first ship, he spent a brief time on the destroyer Percival because the La Vallette was out at sea. He subsequently reported to the new destroyer USS La Vallette (DD-315), where shortly after reporting aboard he'd so impressed his commanding officer that he was made engineer officer despite his lack of rank or experience, and became the youngest engineer officer in the squadron less than a year after leaving the Naval Academy.
He next served on board the battleship USS Nevada (BB-36) before earning a Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Electrical Engineering by way of a year at the Naval Postgraduate School at the Naval Academy, followed by further work at Columbia University. At Columbia he met his future wife, Ruth D. Masters, a Christian and graduate student in international law, whom he married in 1931 after she returned from her doctoral studies at the Sorbonne in Paris. Shortly after marrying, Rickover wrote to his parents of his decision to become an Episcopalian, remaining so for the remainder of his life.(External Link

) More fond of life on a small ship, and knowing that young officers in the submarine service were advancing quickly, Rickover went to Washington and volunteered for submarine duty. His application was turned down due to his age, at that time 29 years-old. As fate would have it, he ran into his former commanding officer from Nevada while leaving the building, who interceded successfully on Rickover's behalf. From 1929 to 1933 Rickover qualified for submarine duty and command aboard the submarines S-9 and S-48.(External Link

) During 1933, while at the Office of the Inspector of Naval Material in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Rickover translated the book Das Unterseeboot (The Submarine), by World War I Admiral Hermann Bauer. Rickover's translation became a basic text for the U.S. submarine service.
In June 1937, he assumed command of the minesweeper USS Finch (AM-9). Later that year, he was selected as an Engineering Duty Officer and spent the remainder of his career serving in that specialty.
After the December 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor sank five battleships, beginning in April 1942 Rickover was key in the salvage operation of the re-floated USS California (BB-44). In that role he was "a leading figure in putting the ship's electric alternators and motors back into operating condition," enabling the battleship to sail under her own power from Pearl Harbor to Puget Sound Navy Yard. California completed her reconstruction and returned to combat operations against Japan in May 1944. (External Link

) Later during the war, his service as head of the Electrical Section in the Bureau of Ships during World War II brought him a Legion of Merit and gave him experience in directing large development programs, choosing talented technical people, and working closely with private industry. During his wartime service, as noted later in a 1954 Time magazine issue that featured him on its cover

"Sharp-tongued Hyman Rickover spurred his men to exhaustion, ripped through red tape, drove contractors into rages. He went on making enemies, but by the end of the war he'd won the rank of captain. He had also won a reputation as a man who gets things done." (External Link)

Naval Reactors and the Atomic Energy Commission

In 1946 a project was begun at the Manhattan Project's nuclear-power focused Clinton Laboratory (now the Oak Ridge National Laboratory) to develop a nuclear electric generating plant. The United States Navy decided to send eight men to this project, including three civilians and one senior and four junior naval officers. Realizing the potential that nuclear energy held for the Navy, Rickover applied.
Although he wasn't initially selected, through the intercession of his wartime boss, Admiral Earle Mills, who became the head of the Navy's Bureau of Ships that same year, Rickover was finally sent to Oak Ridge as the deputy manager of the entire project, granting him access to all facilities, projects and reports.(External Link

) Following efforts by physicists Ross Gunn

, Philip Abelson and others in the Manhattan Project, he became an early convert to the idea of nuclear marine propulsion and more specifically, naval nuclear propulsion. Rickover worked with Alvin M. Weinberg, the Oak Ridge director of research, both to establish the Oak Ridge School of Reactor Technology and to begin the design of the pressurized water reactor for submarine propulsion. (External Link

), (External Link

),(p. 39, The Rickover Effect (2002))
In February 1949, he received an assignment to the Division of Reactor Development, Atomic Energy Commission, and then assumed control of the Navy's effort as Director of the Naval Reactors Branch in the Bureau of Ships, reporting to Mills. This twin role enabled him to both lead the effort to develop the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus (SSN-571), which was launched and commissioned in 1954, as well as oversee the development of the Shippingport Atomic Power Station, the first commercial pressurized water reactor nuclear power plant.
The decision for selecting Rickover to head the development of the nation's nuclear submarine program ultimately rested with Admiral Mills. According to Lieutenant General Leslie Groves, the primary military leader in charge of the Manhattan Project, Mills was anxious to have a very determined man involved, and – though he knew that Rickover was "not too easy to get along with" and "not too popular" – in his judgment Rickover was the man who the Navy could depend on "no matter what opposition he might encounter, once he was convinced of the potentialities of the atomic submarine."(External Link

) Rickover didn't disappoint. The imagination, drive, creativity and engineering expertise demonstrated by Rickover and his team during that time-frame resulted in a highly reliable nuclear reactor in a form-factor that would fit into a submarine hull with no more than a 28-foot beam. These were substantial technical achievements:

In the early 1950s, a megawatt-scale nuclear reactor took up an area roughly the size of a city block.

The prototype for the Nautilus propulsion plant was the world's first high-temperature nuclear reactor.

The basic physics data needed for the reactor design were as yet unavailable.

The reactor design methods had yet to be developed.

There were no available engineering data on the performance of water-exposed metals that were simultaneously experiencing high temperatures, pressures and multi-spectral radiation levels.

No nuclear power plant of any kind had ever been designed to produce steam.

No steam propulsion plant had ever been designed for use in the widely varying sea temperatures and pressures experienced by the condenser during submarine operations.

Components from difficult, exotic materials such as zirconium and hafnium would have to be extracted and manufactured with precision via techniques that were as yet unknown.(External Link

)(External Link

) Promoted to the rank of Vice Admiral in 1958, the same year he was awarded the first of two Congressional Gold Medals(External Link

), for nearly the next three decades Rickover exercised tight control over the ships, technology, and personnel of the nuclear Navy, interviewing and approving or denying every prospective officer being considered for a nuclear ship. Over the course of Rickover's record-length career, these personal interviews amounted to tens of thousands of highly impressionable events; over 14,000 interviews were with recent college-graduates alone.(External Link

) Varying from arcane to combative to humorous (examples

), and ranging from midshipmen to very senior naval aviators who sought command of aircraft carriers (which sometimes lapsed into ego battles), the content of most of these interviews has been lost to history, though some were later chronicled in the several books on Rickover's career, as well as in a rare, personal, 60 Minutes interview with Diane Sawyer in 1984. (External Link

)(External Link

) Rickover's stringent standards and powerful focus on personal integrity are largely credited with being responsible for the United States Navy's continuing record of zero reactor accidents

. During the mid-late 1950's, Rickover revealed the source of his obsession with safety in a personal conversation with a fellow Navy captain:

"I have a son. I love my son. I want everything that I do to be so safe that I'd be happy to have my son operating it. That's my fundamental rule." (p. 55, Power at Sea: A Violent Peace, 1946-2006 (2006))

He also made it a point to be aboard during the initial sea trial of almost every nuclear submarine completing its new-construction period, and by his presence both set his stamp of personal integrity that the ship was ready for the rigors of the open seas, and ensured adequate testing to either prove as much or to establish issues requiring resolution.
As head of Naval Reactors, Rickover's focus and responsibilities were dedicated to reactor safety rather than tactical or strategic submarine warfare training. It could be argued that because of Rickover's singular focus on reactor operations, and direct line of communications with each nuclear submarine's captain, that this acted against the captains' warfighting abilities.
Such a claim, however, doesn't hold up well in consideration of the highly-classified national security accomplishments of the submarine force, such as are allegedly chronicled in (1998).(External Link

) Moreover, the accident-free record of United States Navy reactor operations stands in stark contrast to those of America's primary competitor during the Cold War, the Soviet Union, which lost several submarines to reactor accidents in both its haste and chosen priorities for competing with superior U.S. technology.
As stated in a retrospective analysis by UPI in October 2007:

"U.S. submarines far outperformed the Soviet ones in the crucial area of stealth, and Rickover's obsessive fixation on safety and quality control gave the U.S. nuclear Navy a vastly superior safety record to the Soviet one. This was especially crucial as in a democratic society, particularly after the Three Mile Island nuclear power station crisis in March 1979, a host of nuclear accidents or well-publicized near misses could have shut down the nuclear fleet completely."(External Link)

However, the extreme focus on nuclear propulsion plant operation and maintenance was well known during Rickover's era as a potential hindrance to balancing operational priorities. One way by which this was addressed after the Admiral retired was that only the very strongest, former at-sea submarine commanders have held Rickover's now uniquely eight-year position as NAVSEA-08. From Rickover's first replacement, Kinnaird R. McKee, to today's head of Naval Reactors, Kirkland H. Donald, all have held command of nuclear submarines, their squadrons and ocean fleets; not one has been a long-term Engineering Duty Officer such as Rickover.

Controversy

Hyperactive, political, blunt, confrontational, insulting, flamboyant, and an unexcelled workaholic who was always demanding of others – without regard for rank or position – as well as himself, Admiral Rickover was a thundering force of nature and lightning rod for controversy. Moreover, he'd "little tolerance for mediocrity, none for stupidity." "If a man is dumb," said a Chicago friend, "Rickover thinks he ought to be dead." Even while a Captain, Rickover didn't conceal his opinions, and many of the officers he regarded as dumb eventually rose in rank to be admirals and were assigned to the Pentagon.
Rickover found himself frequently and loudly in bureaucratic combat with these senior naval officers, to the point that he nearly never became "Admiral" Rickover: two admiral-selection boards – exclusively made up of admirals – passed over the highly accomplished Captain Rickover for promotion even while he was in the process of becoming famous. One of these selection boards even met the day after USS Nautilus had its keel-laying ceremony in the presence of President Truman. It eventually took the intervention of the White House, U.S. Congress and the Secretary of the Navy – and the very real threat of changing the Navy's admiral-selection system to include civilians – before the next flag-selection board welcomed the twice passed-over Rickover (normally a career-ending event) into their ranks. (External Link

)(External Link

) Even Rickover's most senior, renowned and professionally-accomplished nuclear-trained officers that he'd personally selected, such as Edward L. Beach, Jr., had mixed feelings about "the kindly old gentleman" (or simply "KOG", as Rickover became euphemistically known in inner circles) and would at times refer to him quite seriously, decidedly and unaffectionately as a "tyrant" with "no account of his gradually failing powers" in his later years (p. 179, United States Submarines, 2002).
However, President Nixon's comments upon awarding the admiral's fourth star in 1973 are germane:

"I don't mean to suggest...that he's a man who is without controversy. He speaks his mind. Sometimes he's rivals who disagree with him; sometimes they're right, and he's the first to admit that sometimes he might be wrong. But the greatness of the American military service, and particularly the greatness of the Navy, is symbolized in this ceremony today, because this man, who is controversial, this man, who comes up with unorthodox ideas, didn't become submerged by the bureaucracy, because once genius is submerged by bureaucracy, a nation is doomed to mediocrity." (External Link)

While both Rickover's military authority and congressional mandate with regard to the U.S. fleet's reactor operations was absolute, it wasn't infrequently a subject of Navy-internal controversy. As head of the Naval Reactors branch, and thus responsible for "signing off" on a crew's competence to operate the reactor safely, he'd the power to effectively remove a warship from active service and did-so on several occasions, much to the consternation of those affected.
In short, Rickover was obsessed with a safe, details-focused and successful nuclear program. Coincident with this success, the perception became established among many observers that he sometimes used the raw exercise of power to occasionally settle scores or tweak noses.

Full accountability

In a distinct contrast to numerous examples of admirals and senior naval officers who would come to point their finger at individuals or groups of individuals in the fleet when something went seriously awry (External Link

) (External Link

), Rickover adamantly took full responsibility for everything within the scope of the naval nuclear propulsion program (NNPP). Sample Rickover quote:

"My program is unique in the military service in this respect: You know the expression 'from the womb to the tomb'; my organization is responsible for initiating the idea for a project; for doing the research, and the development; designing and building the equipment that goes into the ships; for the operations of the ship; for the selection of the officers and men who man the ship; for their education and training. In short, I'm responsible for the ship throughout its life – from the very beginning to the very end." (Hearings on Military Posture and H.R. 12564, U.S. G.P.O., 1974, page 1,392)

Prophecies and warnings regarding fossil fuel depletion

As early as 1957, Admiral Rickover began urging the development of alternate energy consumption paths to that of fossil fuels as their eventual depletion became evident, noting:

"A reduction of per capita energy consumption has always in the past led to a decline in civilization and a reversion to a more primitive way of life...Anyone who has watched a sweating Chinese farm worker strain at his heavily laden wheelbarrow, creaking along a cobblestone road, or who has flinched as he drives past an endless procession of human beasts of burden moving to market in Java - the slender women bent under mountainous loads heaped on their heads - anyone who has seen statistics translated into flesh and bone, realizes the degradation of man's stature when his muscle power becomes the only energy source he can afford. Civilization must wither when human beings are so degraded....High-energy consumption has always been a prerequisite of political power. The tendency is for political power to be concentrated in an ever-smaller number of countries. Ultimately, the nation which controls the largest energy resources will become dominant."(External Link)(External Link)

Overprotection of civilian nuclear power

Following the Three Mile Island (TMI) power plant partial meltdown on March 28, 1979, President Jimmy Carter commissioned a study, "Report of the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island (1979)," chaired by John G. Kemeny, then-president of Dartmouth College. It is claimed in an affidavit signed by Jane Rickover, the Admiral's daughter-in-law, that in her recollection of the Admiral's opinion "the report, if published in its entirety, would have destroyed the civilian nuclear power industry." According to her sworn statement, Rickover persuaded Carter to have the report diluted. She also reports that in November 1985, eight months before his death, "that he'd come to deeply regret his action."(External Link

) Subsequently, Admiral Rickover was asked to testify before Congress in the general context of answering the question as to why naval nuclear propulsion had succeeded in achieving a record of zero reactor-accidents (as defined by the uncontrolled release of fission products to the environment resulting from damage to a reactor core) as opposed to the dramatic one that had just taken place at Three Mile Island. In his testimony, he said:

"Over the years, many people have asked me how I run the Naval Reactors Program, so that they might find some benefit for their own work. I'm always chagrined at the tendency of people to expect that I've a simple, easy gimmick that makes my program function. Any successful program functions as an integrated whole of many factors. Trying to select one aspect as the key one won't work. Each element depends on all the others.(External Link)

Willingness to "sink them all"

Given Rickover's single-minded focus on naval nuclear propulsion, design and operations, it came as a surprise to many when in 1982, near the end of his career, he testified before the U.S. Congress that, were it up to him, he "would sink them all." A seemingly outrageous enigma of a statement – and perhaps one attributable to an old man beyond his time – in context, Rickover's personal integrity and honesty were such that he was lamenting the need for such war machines in the modern world, and specifically acknowledged as well that the employment of nuclear energy ran counter to the course of nature over time.
At a congressional hearing Rickover testified that:

"I don't believe that nuclear power is worth it if it creates radiation. Then you might ask me why do I've nuclear powered ships. That is a necessary evil. I'd sink them all. I'm not proud of the part I played in it. I did it because it was necessary for the safety of this country. That's why I'm such a great exponent of stopping this whole nonsense of war. Unfortunately limits – attempts to limit war have always failed. The lesson of history is when a war starts every nation will ultimately use whatever weapon it has available." Further remarking: "Every time you produce radiation, you produce something that has a certain half-life, in some cases for billions of years. I think the human race is going to wreck itself, and it's important that we get control of this horrible force and try to eliminate it." (Economics of Defense Policy: Hearing before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, 97th Cong., 2nd sess., Pt. 1 (1982))

However, after his retirement -- and only a few months later, in May of 1982 -- Admiral Rickover spoke more specifically regarding the questions "Could you comment on your own responsibility in helping to create a nuclear navy? Do you've any regrets?":

"I don't have regrets. I believe I helped preserve the peace for this country. Why should I regret that? What I accomplished was approved by Congress -- which represents our people. All of you live in safety from domestic enemies because of security from the police. Likewise, you live in safety from foreign enemies because our military keeps them from attacking us. Nuclear technology was already under development in other countries. My assigned responsibility was to develop our nuclear navy. I managed to accomplish this."(External Link)

Willingness to forego all accomplishments

As quoted by President Jimmy Carter during his 1984 interview with Diane Sawyer:

"One of the most remarkable things that he ever told me was when we were together on the submarine and he said that he wished that a nuclear explosive had never been evolved. And then he said, 'I wish that nuclear power had never been discovered.' And I said, 'Admiral, this is your life.' He said, 'I would forego all the accomplishments of my life, and I'd be willing to forego all the advantages of nuclear power to propel ships, for medical research and for every other purpose of generating electric power, if we could have avoided the evolution of atomic explosives.'"(External Link)

Focus on education

When he was a child still living in Russian-occupied Poland, Rickover wasn't allowed to attend public schools because of his Jewish faith. Starting at the age of four, he attended a religious school where the teaching was solely from the Old Testament in Hebrew. School hours were from sunrise to sunset, six days a week.(External Link

) Following his formal education in the U.S. as described above and the birth of his son, Robert, Admiral Rickover developed a decades-long and outspoken interest in the educational standards of the United States, stating in 1957:

"I suggest that this is a good time to think soberly about our responsibilities to our descendents - those who will ring out the Fossil Fuel Age. Our greatest responsibility, as parents and as citizens, is to give America's youngsters the best possible education. We need the best teachers and enough of them to prepare our young people for a future immeasurably more complex than the present, and calling for ever larger numbers of competent and highly trained men and women."(External Link)

Rickover was particularly of the opinion that U.S. standards of education were unacceptably low. His first book centered on education and was a collection of essays calling for improved standards of education, particularly in math and science, entitled Education and Freedom. In this book, the Admiral states that, "education is the most important problem facing the United States today” and “only the massive upgrading of the scholastic standards of our schools will guarantee the future prosperity and freedom of the Republic."
His persistent interest in education led to some related discussions with President John F. Kennedy. (External Link

) (External Link

) While still on active duty, the Admiral had suggested that there are three things that a school must do: First, it must transmit to the pupil a substantial body of knowledge; second, it must develop in him the necessary intellectual skill to apply this knowledge to the problems he'll encounter in adult life; and third, it must inculcate in him the habit of judging issues on the basis of verified fact and logical reasoning.
Recognizing "that nurturing careers of excellence and leadership in science and technology in young scholars is an essential investment in the United States national and global future," following his retirement Admiral Rickover founded the Center for Excellence in Education

in 1983.
Additionally, the Research Science Institute (formerly the Rickover Science Institute), founded by Admiral Rickover in 1984, is a highly respected summer science program hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for rising high school seniors from around the world.

Forced retirement

On January 31, 1982, in his 80's, and after 63 years of service to his country under 13 presidents (Woodrow Wilson through Ronald Reagan), Rickover was forced to retire from the Navy as a full admiral by Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, with the knowledge and consent of President Reagan.
In the early 1980s, structural welding flaws – whose nature and existence had been covered up by falsified inspection records – led to significant delays and expenses in the delivery of several submarines being built at the General Dynamics Electric Boat Division shipyard. In some cases the repairs resulted in practically dismantling and then rebuilding what had been a nearly-completed submarine. While the yard tried to pass the vast cost overruns directly onto the Navy, Rickover fought Electric Boat's general manager, P. Takis Veliotis, tooth and nail at every possible turn, demanding that the yard make good on its shoddy workmanship.
Although the Navy eventually settled with General Dynamics in 1981, paying out $634 million of $843 million in Los Angeles class submarine cost-overrun and reconstruction claims, Rickover was bitter over the yard's having effectively and successfully sued the Navy for its own incompetence and deceit. Of no small irony, the United States Navy was also the yard's insurer – though the concept of reimbursing General Dynamics under these conditions was initially considered "preposterous" in the words of Secretary Lehman, the legal basis of General Dynamics' claims included insurance compensation. (External Link

)(External Link

) Outraged, Rickover furiously lambasted both the settlement and Secretary Lehman, who was partly motivated to seek an agreement in order to continue to focus on achieving President Reagan's goal of a 600-ship Navy. This was hardly Rickover's first clash with the defense industry – he was historically hard, even harsh, in exacting high standards from these contractors(External Link

) – but now his relationship with Electric Boat took on the characteristics of an all-out, no-holds-barred war (Running Critical: The Silent War, Rickover & General Dynamics, 1986).
Veliotis came to be indicted by a federal grand jury under racketeering and fraud charges in 1983 for demanding $1.3 million in kickbacks from a subcontractor. He nonetheless eventually escaped into exile and a life of luxury in his native Greece where he remains a fugitive from U.S. justice.(External Link

) (External Link

) Subsequent to accusations by the indicted Veliotis, a Navy Ad Hoc Gratuities Board determined that Rickover had received gifts from General Dynamics including jewelry, furniture and exotic knives valued at $67,628 over a 16-year period. Charges were investigated as well that gifts were provided by two other major nuclear ship contractors for the navy, General Electric and the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock division of Tenneco. Most of these trinkets were redistributed by Rickover to congressmen, senators, and other government officials.
Veliotis also charged, without providing substantiating evidence, that General Dynamics had given gifts to other senior naval officers, and had routinely underbid contracts with the intention of charging the government for cost overruns. These charges were not pursued by the Navy, at least in part due to Veliotis' flight from justice. (External Link

) Secretary Lehman, a naval aviator, admonished Rickover for this impropriety via a nonpunitive letter and stating that Rickover's "fall from grace with these little trinkets should be viewed in the context of his enormous contributions to the Navy." Stevens Institute of Technology (1958); Columbia University (1960)Further Information

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